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GAPE COD 



BY 



HENRY D. THOREAU 

Author of " A Week on the Cokcord," " Waxden ' 
"Excursions," "The Maine Woods," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

CLIFTON JOHNSON 




NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 






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COPY 8. 



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Copyright, 1908 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



INTRODUCTION 

OF the group of notables who in the middle of the 
last century made the little Massachusetts town of 
Concord their home, and who thus conferred on 
it a literary fame both unique and enduring, Thoreau 
is the only one who was Concord born. His neighbor, 
Emerson, had sought the place in mature life for rural re- 
tirement, and after it became his chosen retreat, Haw- 
thorne, Alcott, and the others followed ; but Thoreau, the 
most peculiar genius of them all, was native to the soil. 

In 1837, at the age of twenty, he graduated from Har- 
vard, and for three years taught school in his home town. 
Then he applied himself to the business in which his father 
was engaged, — the manufacture of lead pencils. He be- 
lieved he could make a better pencil than any at that time 
in use ; but when he succeeded and his friends congratu- 
lated him that he had now opened his way to fortune he re- 
sponded that he would never make another pencil. "Why 
should I?" said he. "I would not do again what I have 
done once." 

So he turned his attention to miscellaneous studies and 
to nature. When he wanted money he earned it by some 
piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat 
or a fence, planting, or surveying. He never married, very 
rarely went to church, did not vote, refused to pay a tax 
to the State, ate no flesh, drank no wine, used no tobacco ; 
and for a long time he was simply an oddity in the estima- 



vi INTRODUCTION 

tion of his fellow- townsmen. But when they at length 
came to understand him better tliey recognized his genu- 
ineness and sincerity and his originality, and they revered 
and admired him. He was entirely independent of the con- 
ventional, and his courage to live as he saw fit and to de- 
fend and uphold what he believed to be right never failed 
him. Indeed, so devoted was he to principle and his own 
ideals that he seems never to have allowed himself one in- 
different or careless moment. 

He was a man of the strongest local attachments, and 
seldom wandered beyond his native township, A trip 
abroad did not tempt him in the least. It would mean in 
his estimation just so much time lost for enjoying his 
own village, and he says: "At best, Paris could only be 
a school in which to learn to live here — a stepping-stone 
to Concord." 

He had a very pronounced antipathy to the average 
prosperous city man, and in speaking of persons of this 
class remarks: "They do a little business commonly each 
day in order to pay their board, and then they congregate 
in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and paddle in the 
social slush, and go unashamed to their beds and take on a 
new layer of sloth." 

The men he loved were those of a more primitive sort, 
unartificial, with the daring to cut loose from the trammels 
of fashion and inherited custom. Especially he liked the 
companionship of men who were in close contact with 
nature. A half -wild Irishman, or some rude farmer, or 
fisherman, or hunter, gave him real delight; and for this 
reason. Cape Cod appealed to him strongly. It was then a 
very isolated portion of the State, and its dwellers were just 
the sort of independent, self-reliant folk to attract him. In 



INTRODUCTION vii 

his account of his rambles there the human element has 
large place, and he lingers fondly over the characteristics 
of his chance acquaintances and notes every salient re- 
mark. They, in turn, no doubt found him interesting, too, 
though the purposes of the wanderer were a good deal of a 
mystery to them, and they were inclined to think he was a 
pedler. 

His book was the result of several journeys, but the only 
trip of which he tells us in detail was in October. That 
month, therefore, was the one I chose for my own visit to 
the Cape when I went to secure the series of pictures that 
illustrate this edition; for I wished to see the region as 
nearly as possible in the same guise that Thoreau describes 
it. From Sandwich, where his record of Cape experiences 
begins, and where the inner shore jBrst takes a decided turn 
eastward, I followed much the same route he had travelled 
in 1849, clear to Provincetown, at the very tip of the hook, 

Thoreau has a good deal to say of the sandy roads and 
toilsome walking. In that respect there has been marked 
improvement, for latterly a large proportion of the main 
highway has been macadamed. Yet one still encounters 
plenty of the old yielding sand roads that make travel a 
weariness either on foot or in teams. Another feature to 
which the nature lover again and again refers is the wind- 
mills. The last of these ceased grinding a score of years 
ago, though several continue to stand in fairly perfect con- 
dition. There have been changes on the Cape, but the 
landscape in the main presents the same appearance it did 
in Thoreau's time. As to the people, if you see them in an 
unconventional way, tramping as Thoreau did, their indi- 
viduality retains much of the interest that he discovered. 

Our author's report of his trip has a piquancy that is 



viii INTRODUCTION 

quite alluring. This might be said of all his books, for no 
matter what he wrote about, his comments were certain to 
be unusual ; and it is as much or more for the revelations 
of his own tastes, thoughts, and idiosyncrasies that we 
read him as for the subject matter with which he deals. 
He had published only two books when he died in 1862 at 
the age of fort}-four, and his "Cape Cod" did not appear 
until 1865. Nor did the public at first show any marked 
interest in his books. During his life, therefore, the circle 
of his admirers was very small, but his fame has steadily 
increased since, and the stimulus of his lively descriptions 
and observations seems certain of enduring appreciation. 

Clifton Johnson. 
Hadlet, Mass. 



CONTENTS 



FAOE 

Introduction v 

I. The Shipwreck 3 

II. Stage-coach ^ Views 21 

III. The Plains of Nauset 35 

IV. The Beach 65 

V. The Wellfleet Oysterman 91 

VI. The Beach Again 117 

"*^II. Across the Cape 149 

VIII. The Highland Light 174 

IX. The Sea and the Desert 205 

X. Provincetown 247 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



The Clam-Digger (Photogravui'e) Frontispiece 

Cohasset — The little cove at Whitehead promontory . 12 

An old windmill 24 

A street in Sandwich 28 

The old Higgins tavern at Orleans 32 

A Nauset lane 36 

Nauset Bay 40 

A scarecrow 44 

Millennium Grove camp-meeting grounds 52 

A Cape Cod citizen 66 

Wreckage under the sand-bluff . 84 

Herring River at Wellfleet 90 

A characteristic gable with many windows .... 92 

A Wellfleet oysterman 96 ' 

Wellfleet . . 104 

Hunting for a leak 114' 

Truro — Starting on a voyage 120 

Unloading the day's catch 136 

A Truro footpath 1 50 

Truro meeting-house on the hill 154 

A herd of cows 158 

Pond Village l64 

Dragging a dory up on the beach 174 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

An old wrecker at home 186 

The Highland Light 194 

Towing along shore 210 

A cranberry meadow 230 

The sand dunes drifting in upon the trees .... 238 

The white breakers on the Atlantic side 244 

In Provincetpwn harbor 248 

Provincetown — A bit of the village from the wharf . 260 

The day of rest 294 

A Provincetown fishing-vessel 304 



CAPE COD 



CAPE COD 



I 

THE SHIPWRECK 

WISHING to get a better view than I had 
yet had of the ocean, which, we are 
told, covers more than two-thirds of 
the globe, but of which a man who lives a few 
miles inland may never see any trace, more than 
of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in 
October, 1849, another the succeeding June, and 
another to Truro in July, 1855 ; the first and last 
time with a single companion, the second time 
alone. I have spent, in all, about three weeks 
on the Cape ; walked from Eastham to Province- 
town twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the 
Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and 
crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way ; 
but having come so fresh to the sea, I have got 
but little salted. My readers must expect only 
so much saltness as the land breeze acquires 
from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is tasted 
on the windows and the bark of trees twenty 
miles inland, after September gales. I have been 
accustomed to make excursions to the ponds 
within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have 
extended my excursions to the seashore. 



4 CAPE COD 

I did not see why I mig:lit not make a book on 
Cape Cod, as well as my neighbor on "Human 
Culture." It is but another name for the same 
thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for 
my title, I suppose that the word Cape is from 
the French cap; which is from the Latin caput, 
a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb capere, 
to take, — that being the part by which we take 
hold of a thing : — Take Time bv the forelock. 
It is also the safest part to take a serpent by. 
And as for Cod, that was derived directlv from 
that "great store of codfish" which Captain 
Bartholomew Gosnold caught there in WO'-Z ; 
which fish appears to have been so called from 
the Saxon word coddc, "a case in which seeds 
are lodged," either from the form of the fish, or 
the quantity of spawn it contains ; whence also, 
perhaps, codling {pomum coctilef) and coddle, — 
to cook green like peas. (V. Die.) - 

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of 
Massachusetts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's 
Bay ; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Malle- 
barre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist 
at Provincetown, — behind which tlie State 
stands on her o-uard. with her back to the Green 
Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of 
the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay, — 
boxincr with northeast storms, and. ever and 
anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from 
the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward her 



THE SHIPAA^ECK 5 

other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her 
breast at Cape Ann. 

On studying the map, I saw that there must 
be an uninterrupted beach on the east or outside 
of the forearm of the Cape, more than thirty 
miles from the general line of the coast, which 
would afford a good sea view, but that, on ac- 
count of an opening in the beach, forming the 
entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must 
strike it in Eastham, if I approached it by land, 
and probably I could walk thence straight to 
Race Point, about twenty-eight miles, and not 
meet with any obstruction. 

We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, 
October 9th, 1849. On reaching Boston, we 
found that the Provincetown steamer, which 
should have got in the day before, had not yet 
arrived, on account of a violent storm ; and, as 
we noticed in the streets a handbill headed, 
"Death! one hundred and forty-five lives lost 
at Cohasset," we decided to go by way of Co- 
hasset. We found many Irish in the cars, going 
to identify bodies and to sympathize with the 
survivors, and also to attend the funeral which 
was to take place in the afternoon ; — and when 
we arrived at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly 
all the passengers were bound for the beach, 
which was about a mile distant, and many other 
persons were flocking in from the neighboring 
countr}\ There were several hundreds of them 



6 CAPE COD 

streamins: off over Cohasset common in that di- 
rection, some on foot and some in wagons, — 
and among them were some sportsmen in their 
hunting-jackets, with their guns, and game-bags, 
and dogs. As we passed the graveyard we saw 
a large hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and. 
just before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly 
windins: and rockv road, we met several hav- 
risro'infrs and farm-wa£:ons comino; awav toward 
the meetino^-house, each loaded with three laro^e, 
roucrh deal boxes. ^Ye did not need to ask what 
was in them. The owners of the wagons were 
made the undertakers. Many horses in carriages 
were fastened to the fences near the shore, and. 
for a mile or more, up and down, the beach was 
covered with people looking out for bodies, and 
examinincr the fras-ments of the wreck. There 
was a small island called Brook Island, with a 
hut on it. Ivinir iust off the shore. This is said 
to be the rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from 
Nantasket to Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks, 
which the waves have laid bare, but have not 
been able to crumble. It has been the scene of 
many a shipwreck. 

The britr S/. John, from Galwav, Ireland, laden 
with emi^rrants, was wrecked on Sundav morn- 
ine; it was now Tuesdav morninsj, and the sea 
was still breakins: violentlv on the rocks. There 
were eighteen or twentv of the same larsje boxes 
that I have mentioned, lying on a green hillside. 



THE SHIPWRECK 7 

a few rods from the water, and surrounded by a 
crowd. The bodies which had been recovered, 
twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected 
there. Some were rapidly nailing down the lids, 
others were carting the boxes away, and others 
were lifting the lids, which were yet loose, and 
peeping under the cloths, for each body, with 
such rags as still adhered to it, was covered 
loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no sig-ns 
of grief, but there was a sober despatch of busi- 
ness which was affecting. One man was seeking 
to identify a particular body, and one undertaker 
or carpenter was calling to another to know in 
what box a certain child was put. I saw many 
marble feet and matted heads as the cloths were 
raised, and one livid, swollen, and mangled body 
of a drowned girl, — who probably had intended 
to go out to service in some American family, — 
to which some rags still adhered, with a string, 
half concealed by the flesh, about its swollen 
neck; the coiled-up wreck of a human hulk, 
gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the bone 
and muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless, — 
merely red and white, — with wide-open and 
staring eyes, yet lustreless, dead-lights; or like 
the cabin windows of a stranded vessel, filled 
with sand. Sometimes there were two or more 
children, or a parent and child, in the same box, 
and on the lid would perhaps be written with red 
chalk, "Bridget such-a-one, and sister's child." 



8 CAPE COD 

The surrounding sward was covered with bits of 
sails and clothing. I have since heard, from one 
who lives by this beach, that a woman who had 
come over before, but had left her infant behind 
for her sister to bring, came and looked into 
these boxes and saw in one, — probably the 
same whose superscription I have quoted, — her 
child in her sister's arms, as if the sister had 
meant to be found thus ; and within three days 
after, the mother died from the effect of that 
sight. 

We turned from this and walked along the 
rocky shore. In the first cove were strewn what 
seemed the fragments of a vessel, in small pieces 
mixed with sand and sea- weed, and great quan- 
tities of feathers ; but it looked so old and rusty, 
that I at first took it to be some old wreck which 
had lain there many years. I even thought of 
Captain Kidd, and that the feathers were those 
which sea-fowl had cast there ; and perhaps there 
might be some tradition about it in the neigh- 
borhood. I asked a sailor if that was the St. John. 
He said it was. I asked him where she struck. 
He pointed to a rock in front of us, a mile from 
the shore, called the Grampus Rock, and added : 

"You can see a part of her now sticking up; 
it looks like a small boat." 

I saw it. It was thought to be held by the 
chain-cables and the anchors. I asked if the 
bodies which I saw were all that were drowned. 



THE SHIPWRECK 9 

"Not a quarter of them," said he. 

"Where are the rest?" 

"Most of them right underneath that piece 
you see." 

It appeared to us that there was enough rub- 
bish to make the wreck of a large vessel in this 
cove alone, and that it would take many days to 
cart it off. It was several feet deep, and here and 
there was a bonnet or a jacket on it. In the very 
midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were 
men with carts busily collecting the sea-weed 
which the storm had cast up, and conveying it 
beyond the reach of the tide, though they were 
often obliged to separate fragments of clothing 
from it, and they might at any moment have 
found a human body under it. Drown who 
might, they did not forget that this weed was a 
valuable manure. This shipwreck had not pro- 
duced a visible vibration in the fabric of society. 

About a mile south we could see, rising above 
the rocks, the masts of the British brig which 
the St. John had endeavored to follow, which 
had slipped her cables and, by good luck, run 
into the mouth of Cohasset Harbor. A little 
further along the shore we saw a man's clothes 
on a rock; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a 
straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her 
masts high and dry, broken into several pieces. 
In another rocky cove, several rods from the 
water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a 



10 CAPE COD 

part of one side of the vessel, still hanging to- 
gether. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by four- 
teen wide. I was even more surprised at the 
power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered 
fragment, than I had been at the sight of the 
smaller fragments before. The largest timbers 
and iron braces were broken superfluously, and 
I saw that no material could withstand the power 
of the waves ; that iron must go to pieces in such 
a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up 
like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of these 
timbers, however, were so rotten that I could 
almost thrust my umbrella through them. They 
told us that some were saved on this piece, and 
also showed where the sea had heaved it into 
this cove, which was now dry. When I saw 
where it had come in, and in what condition, I 
wondered that any had been saved on it. A 
little further on a crowd of men was ^collected 
around the mate of the *S^. John, who was telling 
his story. He was a slim-looking youth, who 
spoke of the captain as the master, and seemed 
a little excited. He was saying that when they 
jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the vessel 
lurching, the weight of the water in the boat 
caused the painter to break, and so they 
were separated. Whereat one man came away, 
saying : — 

'*Well, I don't see but he tells a straight story 
enough. You see, the weight of the water in the 



THE SHIPWRECK 11 

boat broke the painter. A boat full of water is 
very heavy," — and so on, in a loud and im- 
pertinently earnest tone, as if he had a bet de- 
pending on it, but had no humane interest in 
the matter. 

Another, a large man, stood near by upon a 
rock, gazing into the sea, and chewing large 
quids of tobacco, as if that habit were forever 
confirmed with him. 

"Come," says another to his companion, 
"let's be off. We 've seen the whole of it. It's 
no use to stay to the funeral." 

Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, 
who, we were told, was one that was saved. He 
was a sober-looking man, dressed in a jacket 
and gray pantaloons, with his hands in the 
pockets. I asked him a few questions, which 
he answered; but he seemed unwilling to talk 
about it, and soon walked away. By his side 
stood one of the life-boatmen, in an oil-cloth 
jacket, who told us how they went to the relief 
of the British brig, thinking that the boat of the 
St. John, which they passed on the way, held all 
her crew, — for the waves prevented their seeing 
those who were on the vessel, though they might 
have saved some had they known there were 
any there. A little further was the flag of the 
St. John spread on a rock to dry, and held down 
by stones at the corners. This frail, but essen- 
tial and significant portion of the vessel, which 



12 CAPE COD 

had so long been the sport of the winds, was sure 
to reach the shore. There were one or two 
houses visible from these rocks, in which were 
some of the survivors recovering from the shock 
which their bodies and minds had sustained. 
One was not expected to live. 

We kept on down the shore as far as a prom- 
ontory called Whitehead, that we might see more 
of the Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove, within 
half a mile, there were an old man and his son 
collecting, with their team, the sea- weed which 
that fatal storm had cast up, as serenely em- 
ployed as if there had never been a wreck in the 
world, though they were within sight of the 
Grampus Rock, on which the St. John had 
struck. The old man had heard that there was 
a wreck, and knew most of the particulars, but 
he said that he had not been up there since it 
happened. It was the wrecked weed that con- 
cerned him most, rock-weed, kelp, and sea- 
weed, as he named them, which he carted to his 
barn-yard; and those bodies were to him but 
other weeds which the tide cast up, but which 
were of no use to him. We afterwards came to 
the life-boat in its harbor, waiting for another 
emergency, — and in the afternoon we saw the 
funeral procession at a distance, at the head 
of which walked the captain with the other 
survivors. 

On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene 




s: 






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THE SHIPWRECK 13 

as I might have expected. If I had found one 
body cast upon the beach in some lonely place, 
it would have affected me more. I sympathized 
rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss 
and mangle these poor human bodies was the 
order of the day. If this was the law of Nature, 
why waste any time in awe or pity ? If the last 
day were come, we should not think so much 
about the separation of friends or the blighted 
prospects of individuals. I saw that corpses 
might be multiplied, as on the field of battle, till 
they no longer affected us in any degree, as ex- 
ceptions to the common lot of humanity. Take 
all the graveyards together, they are always the 
majority. It is the individual and private that 
demands our sympathy. A man can attend but 
one funeral in the course of his life, can behold 
but one corpse. Yet I saw that the inhabitants 
of the shore would be not a little affected by this 
event. They would watch there many days and 
nights for the sea to give up its dead, and their 
imaginations and sympathies would supply the 
place of mourners far away, who as yet knew not 
of the wreck. Many days after this, something 
white was seen floating on the water by one who 
was sauntering on the beach. It was approached 
in a boat, and found to be the body of a woman, 
which had risen in an upright position, whose 
white cap was blown back with the wind. I saw 
that the beauty of the shore itself was wrecked 



14 CAPE COD 

for many a lonely walker there, until he could 
perceive, at last, how its beauty was enhanced 
by wrecks like this, and it acquired thus a rarer 
and sublimer beauty still. 

Why care for these dead bodies ? They really 
have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their 
owners were coming to the New World, as 
Columbus and the Pilgrims did, — they were 
within a mile of its shores ; but, before they could 
reach it, they emigrated to a newer world than 
ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of whose ex- 
istence we believe that there is far more univer- 
sal and convincing evidence — though it has not 
yet been discovered by science — than Colum- 
bus had of this; not merely mariners' tales and 
some paltry drift-wood and sea- weed, but a con- 
tinual drift and instinct to all our shores. I saw 
their empty hulks that came to land; but they 
themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some 
shore yet further west, toward which we are all 
tending, and which we shall reach at last, it may 
be through storm and darkness, as they did. 
No doubt, we have reason to thank God that 
they have not been "shipwrecked into life 
ajrain." The mariner who makes the safest 
port in Heaven, perchance, seems to his friends 
on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Bos- 
ton Harbor the better place; though perhaps 
invisible to them, a skilful pilot comes to meet 
him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow off 



THE SHIPWRECK 15 

that coast, his good ship makes the land in hal- 
cyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture 
there, while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. 
It is hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt, 
it is easy enough to do without it when once it is 
gone. All their plans and hopes burst like a 
bubble ! Infants by the score dashed on the 
rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, no ! 
If the St. John did not make her port here, she 
has been telegraphed there. The strongest wind 
cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath. 
A just man's purpose cannot be split on any 
Grampus or material rock, but itself will split 
rocks till it succeeds. 

The verses addressed to Columbus, dying, 
may, with slight alterations, be applied to the 
passengers of the St. John : — 

"Soon with them will all be over. 
Soon the voyage will be begun 
That shall bear them to discover. 
Far away, a land unknown. 

"Land that each, alone, must visit. 
But no tidings bring to men; 
For no sailor, once departed, 
Ever hath returned again. 

"No carved wood, no broken branches. 
Ever drift from that far wild; 
He who on that ocean launches 
Meets no corse of angel child. 



16 CAPE COD 

"Undismayed, my noble sailors, 
Spread, then spread your canvas out; 
Spirits ! on a sea of ether 
Soon shall ye serenely float ! 

"Where the deep no plummet soundeth. 
Fear no hidden breakers there, 
And the fanning wing of angels 
Shall your bark right onward bear. 

"Quit, now, full of heart and comfort, 
These rude shores, they are of earth; 
Where the rosy clouds are parting, 
There the blessed isles loom forth." 

One summer day, since this, I came this way, 
on foot, along the shore from Boston. It was so 
warm that some horses had cHmbed to the very 
top of the ramparts of the old fort at Hull, 
where there was hardly room to turn round, for 
the sake of the breeze. The Datura stramonium, 
or thorn-apple, was in full bloom 9,long the 
beach ; and, at sight of this cosmopolite, — 
this Captain Cook among plants, — carried in 
ballast all over the world, I felt as if I were on 
the highway of nations. Say, rather, this Viking, 
king of the Bays, for it is not an innocent plant ; 
it suggests not merely commerce, but its attend- 
ant vices, as if its fibres were the stuff of which 
pirates spin their yarns. I heard the voices of 
men shouting aboard a vessel, half a mile from 
the shore, which sounded as if they were in a 
barn in the country, they being between the 



THE SHIPWRECK 17 

sails. It was a purely rural sound. As I looked 
over the water, I saw the isles rapidly wasting 
away, the sea nibbling voraciously at the con- 
tinent, the springing arch of a hill suddenly 
interrupted, as at Point Alderton, — what bot- 
anists might call premorse, — showing, by its 
curve against the sky, how much space it must 
have occupied, where now was water only, On 
the other hand, these wrecks of isles were being 
fancifully arranged into new shores, as at Hog 
Island, inside of Hull, where everything seemed 
to be gently lapsing, into futurity. This isle had 
got the very form of a ripple, — and I thought 
that the inhabitants should bear a ripple for 
device on their shields, a wave passing over 
them, with the datura, which is said to produce 
mental alienation of long duration without affect- 
ing the bodily health,^ springing from its edge. 

' The Jamestown weed (or thorn-apple). "This, being an 
early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some 
of the soldiers sent thither [i. e. to Virginia] to quell the rebellion of 
Bacon ; and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which 
was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon 
it for several days : one would blow up a feather in the air ; an- 
other would dart straws at it with much fury ; and another, stark 
naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and 
making mows at them ; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his 
companions, and sneer in their faces, with a countenance more 
antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic condition they 
were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves, 
— though it was observed that all their actions were full of in- 
nocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly. 

2 



18 CAPE COD 

The most interesting thing which I heard of, in 
this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, 
whose locality was pointed out to me, on the 
side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the 
shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I 
should go through Rome, it would be some 
spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember 
the longest. It is true, I was somewhat inter- 
ested in the well at the old French fort, which 
was said to be ninety feet deep, with a cannon at 
the bottom of it. On Nantasket beach I counted 
a dozen chaises from the public-house. From 
time to time the riders turned their horses toward 
the sea, standing in the water for the coolness, — 
and I saw the value of beaches to cities for the 
sea breeze and the bath. 

At Jerusalem village the inhabitants were col- 
lecting in haste, before a thunder-shower now 
approaching, the Irish moss which they had 
spread to dry. The shower passed on one side, 
and gave me a few drops only, which did not 
cool the air. I merely felt a puff upon my cheek, 
though, within sight, a vessel was capsized in the 
bay, and several others dragged their anchors, 
and were near going ashore. The sea-bathing 
at Cohasset Rocks was perfect. The water was 
purer and more transparent than any I had ever 

A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days 
returned to themselves again, not remembering anything that had 
passed." — Beverly's History of Virginia, p. 120. 



THE SHIPWRECK 19 

seen. There was not a particle of mud or slime 
about it. The bottom being sandy, I could see 
the sea-perch swimming about. The smooth 
and fantastically worn rocks, and the perfectly 
clean and tress-like rock-weeds falling over you, 
and attached so firmly to the rocks that you 
could pull yourself up by them, greatly enhanced 
the luxury of the bath. The stripe of barnacles 
just above the weeds reminded me of some 
vegetable growth, — the buds, and petals, and 
seed-vessels of flowers. They lay along the 
seams of the rock like buttons on a waistcoat. 
It was one of the hottest days in the year, yet I 
found the water so icy cold that I could swim 
but a stroke or two, and thought that, in case of 
shipwreck, there would be more danger of being 
chilled to death than simply drowned. One 
immersion was enough to make you forget the 
dog-days utterly. Though you were sweltering 
before, it will take you half an hour now to re- 
member that it was ever warm. There were the 
tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the 
ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against 
and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel. 
The water held in their little hollows, on the 
receding of the tide, was so crystalline that I 
could not believe it salt, but wished to drink it; 
and higher up were basins of fresh water left 
by the rain, — all which, being also of different 
depths and temperature, were convenient for 



20 CAPE COD 

different kinds of baths. Also, the larger hollows 
in the smoothed rocks formed the most conven- 
ient of seats and dressing-rooms. In these re- 
spects it was the most perfect seashore that I 
had seen. 

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only 
by a narrow beach, a handsome but shallow lake 
of some four hundred acres, which, I was told, 
the sea had tossed over the beach in a great 
storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had 
piissed into it, it had stopped up its outlet, and 
now the alewives were dvino: bv thousands, and 
the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence 
as the water evaporated. It had live rocky islets 
in it. 

This rockv shore is called Pleasant Cove, on 
some maps ; on the map of Cohasset, that name 
appears to be confined to the particular cove 
where I saw the wreck of the St. J aim. The 
ocean did not look, now, as if anv were ever 
shipwrecked in it; it was not grand and sub- 
lime, but beautiful as a lake. Not a vestiae of 
a wreck wa^ visible, nor could I believe that the 
bones of many a shipwrecked man were buried 
in that pure sand. But to go on with our first 
excursion. 



n 

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 

A FTER spending the night in Bridgewater, 
A\ and picking up a few arrow-heads there in 
the morning, we took the cars for Sandwich, 
where we arrived before noon. This was the 
terminus of the "Cape Cod Railroad," though 
it is but the beginning of the Cape. As it rained 
hard, with driving mists, and there was no sign 
of its holding up, we here took that almost obso- 
lete conveyance, the stage, for "as far as it went 
that day," as we told the driver. We had for- 
gotten how far a stage could go in a day, but we 
were told that the Cape roads were very "heavy," 
though they added that, being of sand, the rain 
would improve them. This coach was an ex- 
ceedingly narrow one, but as there was a slight 
spherical excess over two on a seat, the driver 
waited till nine passengers had got in, without 
taking the measure of any of them, and then 
shut the door after two or three ineffectual slams, 
as if the fault were all in the hinges or the latch, 
— while we timed our inspirations and expira- 
tions so as to assist him. 

We were now^ fairly on the Cape, which ex- 
tends from Sandwich eastward thirty-five miles, 



22 CAPE COD 

and thence north and northwest thirty more, in 
all sixty-five, and has an average breadth of 
about five miles. In the interior it rises to the 
height of two hundred, and sometimes perhaps 
three hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
According to Hitchcock, the geologist of the 
State, it is composed almost entirely of sand, 
even to the depth of three hundred feet in some 
places, though there is probably a concealed core 
of rock a little beneath the surface, and it is of 
diluvian origin, excepting a small portion at the 
extremity and elsewhere along the shores, which 
is alluvial. For the first half of the Cape large 
blocks of stone are found, here and there, mixed 
with the sand, but for the last thirty miles 
boulders, or even gravel, are rarely met with. 
Hitchcock conjectures that the ocean has, in 
course of time, eaten out Boston , Harbor and 
other bays in the mainland, and that the minute 
fragments have been deposited by the currents 
at a distance from the shore, and formed this 
sand-bank. Above the sand, if the surface is 
subjected to agricultural tests, there is found to 
be a thin layer of soil gradually diminishing from 
Barnstable to Truro, where it ceases ; but there 
are many holes and rents in this weather-beaten 
garment not likely to be stitched in time, which 
reveal the naked flesh of the Cape, and its ex- 
tremity is completely bare. 

I at once got out my book, the eighth volume 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 23 

of the Collections of the Massachusetts Histori- 
cal Society, printed in 1802, which contains some 
short notices of the Cape towns, and began to 
read up to where I was, for in the cars I could 
not read as fast as I travelled. To those who 
came from the side of Plymouth, it said : "After 
riding through a body of woods, twelve miles 
in extent, interspersed with but few houses, the 
settlement of Sandwich appears, with a more 
agreeable effect, to the eye of the traveller." 
Another writer speaks of this as a beautiful vil- 
lage. But I think that our villages will bear to 
be contrasted only with one another, not with 
Nature. I have no great respect for the writer's 
taste, who talks easily about beautiful villages, 
embellished, perchance, with a "fulling-mill," 
"a handsome academy," or meeting-house, and 
"a number of shops for the different mechanic 
arts"; where the green and white houses of the 
gentry, drawn up in rows, front on a street of 
which it would be difficult to tell whether it is 
most like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such 
spots can be beautiful only to the weary trav- 
eller, or the returning native, — or, perchance, 
the repentant misanthrope; not to him who, 
with unprejudiced senses, has just come out of 
the woods, and approaches one of them, by a 
bare road, through a succession of straggling 
homesteads where he cannot tell which is the 
alms-house. However, as for Sandwich, I can- 



^4 CAPE COD 

not speak particularly. Ours was but half a 
Sandwich at most, and that must have fallen on 
the buttered side some time. I onlv saw that it 
was a closely built town for a small one. with 

ft 

glass-works to improve its sand, and narrow 
streets in which we turned round and round till 
we could not tell which wav we were i^oiuix, and 

ft C* vT* 

the rain came in. first on this side, and then on 
that, and I saw that thev in the houses were more 

ft 

comfortable than we in the coach, ^[v book also 

ft 

said of this town, "The inhabitants, in oreneral. 
are substantial livers." — that is. I suppose, they 
do not live like philosophers: but. as the stage 
did not stop long enough for us to dine, we had 
no ©pportunity to test the truth of this statement. 
It mav have referred, however, to the quantity 

• I ft 

"of oil they would yield." It further said, "The 

ft • 

inhabitants of Sandwich jjenerallv manifest a 
fond and steady adherence to the m:mners. em- 

ft 

plovments, and modes of liviuir which charac- 

I ft O 

terized their fathers"; which made me think 
that thev were, after all, very much like all the 

ft ft 

rest of the world ; — and it added that this was 
"a resemblance, which, at this day, will consti- 
tute no impeachment of either their virtue or 
taste": which remark proves to me that the 
writer was one with the rest of them. No people 
ever lived bv cursin^: their fathers, however irreat 

ft V* r^ 

a curse their fathers might have been to them. 
Hut it must be confessed that ours was old au- 




Jn old windmill 



II 



I 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 25 

thority, and probably they have changed all that 
now. 

Our route was along the Bay side, through 
Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, and Brewster, 
to Orleans, with a range of low hills on our right, 
running down the Cape. The weather was not 
favorable for wayside views, but we made the 
most of such glimpses of land and water as we 
could get through the rain. The country was, 
for the most part, bare, or with only a little 
scrubby wood left on the hills. We noticed in 
Yarmouth ' — and, if I do not mistake, in Dennis 
— large tracts where pitch-pines were planted 
four or five years before. They were in rows, as 
they appeared when we were abreast of them, 
and, excepting that there were extensive vacant 
spaces, seemed to be doing remarkably well. 
This, we were told, was the only use to which 
such tracts could be profitably put. Every 
higher eminence had a pole set up on it, with an 
old storm-coat or sail tied to it, for a signal, that 
those on the south side of the Cape, for instance, 
might know when the Boston packets had ar- 
rived on the>north. It appeared as if this use 
must absorb the greater part of the old clothes 
of the Cape, leaving but few rags for the pedlers. 
The wind-mills on the hills, — large weather- 
stained octagonal structures, — and the salt- 
works scattered all along the shore, with their 
long rows of vats resting on piles driven into the 



26 CAPE COD 

marsh, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their 
slighter wind-mills, were novel and interesting 
objects to an inlander. The sand by the road- 
side was partially covered with bunches of a 
moss-like plant, Hudsonia tomentosa, which a 
woman in the stage told us was called "poverty- 
grass," because it grew where nothing else 
would. 

I was struck by the pleasant equality which 
reigned among the stage company, and their 
broad and invulnerable good-humor. They were 
what is called free and easy, and met one another 
to advantage, as men who had at length learned 
how to live. They appeared to know each other 
when they were strangers, they were so simple 
and downright. They were well met, in an un- 
usual sense, that is, they met as well as they could 
meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any 
impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed 
of one another, but were contented to make just 
such a company as the ingredients allowed. It 
was evident that the same foolish respect was 
not here claimed for mere wealth and station 
that is in many parts of New England ; yet some 
of them were the *' first people," as they are 
called, of the various towns through which we 
passed. Retired sea-captains, in easy circum- 
stances, who talked of farming as sea-captains 
are wont ; an erect, respectable, and trustworthy- 
looking man, in his wrapper, some of the salt of 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 27 

the earth, who had formerly been the salt of the 
sea ; or a more courtly gentleman, who, per- 
chance, had been a representative to the General 
Court in his day; or a broad, red-faced Cape 
Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be 
easily irritated ; or a fisherman's wife, who had 
been waiting a week for a coaster to leave Boston, 
and had at length come by the cars. 

A strict regard for truth obliges us to say that 
the few women whom we saw that day looked 
exceedingly pinched up. They had prominent 
chins and noses, having lost all their teeth, and 
a sharp W would represent their profile. They 
were not so well preserved as their husbands ; or 
perchance they were well preserved as dried 
specimens. (Their husbands, however, were 
pickled.) But we respect them not the less for 
all that; our own dental system is far from 
perfect. 

Still we kept on in the rain, or, if we stopped, 
it was commonly at a post-office, and we thought 
that writing letters, and sorting them against our 
arrival, must be the principal employment of the 
inhabitants of the Cape this rainy day. The 
post-office appeared a singularly domestic insti- 
tution here. Ever and anon the stage stopped 
before some low shop or dwelling, and a wheel- 
wright or shoemaker appeared in his shirt sleeves 
and leather apron, with spectacles newly donned, 
holding up Uncle Sam's bag, as if it were a slice 



28 CAPE COD 

of home-made cake, for the travellers, while he 
retailed some piece of gossip to the driver, really 
as indifferent to the presence of the former as if 
they were so much baggage. In one instance 
we understood that a woman was the post- 
mistress, and they said that she made the best 
one on the road ; but we suspected that the letters 
must be subjected to a very close scrutiny there. 
While we were stopping for this purpose at 
Dennis, we ventured to put our heads out of 
the windows, to see where we were going, and 
saw rising before us, through the mist, singular 
barren hills, all stricken with poverty-grass, 
looming up as if they were in the horizon, though 
they were close to us, and we seemed to have 
got to the end of the land on that side, notwith- 
standing that the horses were still headed that 
way. Indeed, that part of Dennis which we saw 
was an exceedingly barren and desolate country, 
of a character which I can find no name for; 
such a surface, perhaps, as the bottom of the 
sea made dry land day before yesterday. It was 
covered with poverty-grass, and there was hardly 
a tree in sight, but here and there a little weather- 
stained, one-storied house, with a red roof, — 
for often the roof was painted, though the rest 
of the house was not, — standing bleak and 
cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the 
land, where the comfort must have been all 
inside. Yet we read in the Gazetteer — for we 




A street in Sandwich 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 29 

carried that too with us — that, in 1837, one 
hundred and fifty masters of vessels, belonging 
to this town, sailed from the various ports of the 
Union. There must be many more houses in 
the south part of the town, else we cannot imagine 
where they all lodge when they are at home, if 
ever they are there ; but the truth is, their houses 
are floating ones, and their home is on the ocean. 
There were almost no trees at all in this part of 
Dennis, nor could I learn that they talked of 
setting out any. It is true, there was a meeting- 
house, set round with Lombardy poplars, in a 
hollow square, the rows fully as straight as the 
studs of a building, and the corners as square; 
but, if I do not mistake, every one of them was 
dead. I could not help thinking that they needed 
a revival here. Our book said that, in 1795, there 
was erected in Dennis "an elegant meeting-house, 
with a steeple." Perhaps this was the one; 
though whether it had a steeple, or had died 
down so far from sympathy with the poplars, I 
do not remember. Another meeting-house in 
this town was described as a "neat building"; 
but of the meeting-house in Chatham, a neigh- 
boring town, for there was then but one, nothing 
is said, except that it "is in good repair," — both 
which remarks, I trust, may be understood as 
applying to the churches spiritual as well as 
material. However, "elegant meeting-houses," 
from that Trinity one on Broadway, to this at 



30 CAPE COD 

Nobscusset, in my estimation, belong to the 
same category with "beautiful villages." I was 
never in season to see one. Handsome is that 
handsome does. What they did for shade here, 
in warm weather, we did not know, though we 
read that "fogs are more frequent in Chatham 
than in any other part of the country ; and they 
serve in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the 
houses against the heat of the sun. To those 
who delight in extensive vision," — is it to be 
inferred that the inhabitants of Chatham do not ? 
— "they are unpleasant, but they are not found 
to be unhealthful." Probably, also, the unob- 
structed sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan. 
The historian of Chatham says further, that "in 
many families there is no difference between the 
breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies 
being as common at the one as at the other." 
But that leaves us still uncertain whether they 
were really common at either. 

The road, which was quite hilly, here ran near 
the Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side, and 
"the rough hill of Scargo," said to be the highest 
land on the Cape, on the other. Of the wide 
prospect of the Bay afforded by the summit of 
this hill, our guide says: "The view has not 
much of the beautiful in it, but it communicates 
a strong emotion of the sublime." That is the 
kind of communication which we love to have 
made to us. We passed through the village of 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 31 

Suet, in Dennis, on Suet and Quivet Necks, of 
which it is said, "when compared with Nob- 
scusset," — we had a misty recollection of hav- 
ing passed through, or near to, the latter, — "it 
may be denominated a pleasant village; but, in 
comparison with the village of Sandwich, there 
is little or no beauty in it." However, we liked 
Dennis well, better than any town we had seen 
on the Cape, it was so novel, and, in that stormy 
day, so sublimely dreary. 

Captain John Sears, of Suet, was the first per- 
son in this country who obtained pure marine 
salt by solar evaporation alone; though it had 
long been made in a similar way on the coast of 
France, and elsewhere. This was in the year 
1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt 
was scarce and dear. The Historical Collections 
contain an interesting account of his experiments, 
which we read when we first saw the roofs of the 
salt-works. Barnstable county is the most fav- 
orable locality for these works on our northern 
coast, — there is so little fresh water here empty- 
ing into ocean. Quite recently there were about 
two millions of dollars invested in this business 
here. But now the Cape is unable to compete 
with the importers of salt and the manufacturers 
of it at the West, and, accordingly, her salt-works 
are fast going to decay. From making salt, they 
turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer 
will uniformly tell you, under the head of each 



32 CAPE COD 

town, how many go a-fishing, and the value of 
the fish and oil taken, how much salt is made 
and used, how many are engaged in the coast- 
ing trade, how many in manufacturing palm- 
leaf hats, leather, boots, shoes, and tinware, and 
then it has done, and leaves you to imagine the 
more truly domestic manufactures which are 
nearly the same all the world over. 

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brew- 
ster, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he 
would be forgotten else. Who has not heard of 
Elder Brewster? Who knows who he was? 
This appeared to be the modern-built town of 
the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea- 
captains. It is said that "there are more mas- 
ters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign 
voyages belonging to this place than to any other 
town in the country." There were many of the 
modern American houses here, such as they turn 
out at Cambridgeport, standing on the sand; 
you could almost swear that they had been floated 
down Charles River, and drifted across the Bay. 
I call them American, because they are paid for 
by Americans, and "put up" by American car- 
penters ; but they are little removed from lumber ; 
only Eastern stuff disguised with white paint, the 
least interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Per- 
haps we have reason to be proud of our naval 
architecture, and need not go to the Greeks, or 
the Goths, or the Italians, for the models of our 




s 

o 

R 



.^0 






STAGE-COACH VIEWS 33 

vessels. Sea-captains do not employ a Cam- 
bridgeport carpenter to build their floating 
houses, and for their houses on shore, if they 
must copy any, it would be more agreeable to 
the imagination to see one of their vessels turned 
bottom upward, in the Numidian fashion. We 
read that, "at certain seasons, the reflection of 
the sun upon the windows of the houses in Well- 
fleet and Truro (across the inner side of the elbow 
of the Cape) is discernible with the naked eye, 
at a distance of eighteen miles and upward, on 
the county road." This we were pleased to im- 
agine, as we had not seen the sun for twenty- 
four hours. 

The same author (the Rev. John Simpkins) 
said of the inhabitants, a good while ago: **No 
persons appear to have a greater relish for the 
social circle and domestic pleasures. They are 
not in the habit of frequenting taverns, unless on 
public occasions. I know not of a proper idler 
or tavern-haunter in the place." This is more 
than can be said of my townsmen. 

At length we stopped for the night at Higgins's 
tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we 
were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not know- 
ing whether we should see land or water ahead 
when the mist cleared away. We here overtook 
two Italian boys, who had waded thus far down 
the Cape through the sand, with their organs on 
their backs, and were going on to Provincetown. 

3 



S4 CAPE COD 

What a hard lot, we thought, if the Province- 
town people should shut their doors against 
them ! Whose yard would they go to next ? 
Yet we concluded that they had chosen wisely 
to come here, where other music than that of the 
surf must be rare. Thus the great civilizer sends 
out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy 
cape and light-house of the New World which 
the census-taker visits, and summons the savage 
there to surrender. 



Ill 

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 

THE next morning, Thursday, October 11th, 
it rained, as hard as ever; but we were 
determined to proceed on foot, neverthe- 
less. We first made some inquiries with regard 
to the practicabiHty of walking up the shore on 
the Atlantic side to Provincetown, whether we 
should meet with any creeks or marshes to 
trouble us. Higgins said that there was no ob- 
struction, and that it was not much farther than 
by the road, but he thought that we should find 
it very "heavy" walking in the sand; it was bad 
enough in the road, a horse would sink in up to 
the fetlocks there. But there was one man at 
the tavern who had walked it, and he said that 
we could go very well, though it was sometimes 
inconvenient and even dangerous walking under 
the bank, when there was a great tide, with an 
easterly wind, which caused the sand to cave. 
For the first four or five miles we followed the 
road, which here turns to the north on the elbow, 
— the narrowest part of the Cape, — that we 
might clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of 
Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We 
found the travelling good enough for walkers on 



36 CAPE COD 

the sides of the roads, though it was "hea\'}'" 
for horses in the middle. We walked with our 
umbrellas behind us, since it blowed hard as well 
as rained, with driving mists, as the day before, 
and the wind helped us over the sand at a rapid 
rate. Evervthins: indicated that we had reached 
a strange shore. The road was a mere lane, wind- 
ing over bare swells of bleak and barren-looking 
land. The houses were few and far between, 
besides being small and rusty, though they ap- 
peared to be kept in good repair, and their door- 
yards, which were the unfenced Cape, were 
tidy; or, rather, they looked as if the ground 
around them was blown clean bv the wind. Per- 
haps the scarcity of wood here, and the conse- 
quent absence of the wood-pile and other wooden 
traps, had something to do with this appearance. 
Thev seemed, like mariners ashore, to have sat 
right down to enjoy the firmness of the land, 
without studying their postures or habiliments. 
To them it was merely terra firma and cognita, 
not yet jertilis and jucunda. Every landscape 
which is drear}' enough has a certain beauty to 
my eyes, and in this instance its permanent 
qualities were enhanced by the weather. Eveiy- 
thing told of the sea, even when we did not see 
its waste or hear its roar. For birds there were 
gulls, and for carts in the fields, boats turned 
bottom upward against the houses, and some- 
times the rib of a whale was woven into the 




A Nauset lane 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 37 

fence by the road-side. The trees were, if pos- 
sible, rarer than the houses, excepting apple- 
trees, of which there were a few small orchards 
in the hollows. These were either narrow and 
high, with flat tops, having lost their side 
branches, like huge plum-bushes growing in ex- 
posed situations, or else dwarfed and branching 
immediately at the ground, like quince-bushes. 
They suggested that, under like circumstances, 
all trees would at last acquire like habits of 
growth. I afterward saw on the Cape many 
full-grown apple-trees not higher than a man's 
head; one whole orchard, indeed, where all 
the fruit could have been gathered by a man 
standing on the ground; but you could hardly 
creep beneath the trees. Some, which the own- 
ers told me were twenty years old, were only 
three and a half feet high, spreading at six inches 
from the ground five feet each way, and being 
withal surrounded with boxes of tar to catch 
the cankerworms, they looked like plants in 
flower-pots, and as if they might be taken into 
the house in the winter. In another place, I saw 
some not much larger than currant-bushes; yet 
the owner told me that they had borne a barrel 
and a half of apples that fall. If they had been 
placed close together, I could have cleared them 
all at a jump. I measured some near the High- 
land Light in Truro, which had been taken from 
the shrubby woods thereabouts when young, and 



38 CAPE COD 

grafted. One, which had been set ten years, was 
on an average eighteen inches high, and spread 
nine feet with a flat top. It had borne one bushel 
of apples two years before. Another, probably 
twenty years old from the seed, was five feet high, 
and spread eighteen feet, branching, as usual, at 
the ground, so that you could not creep under it. 
This bore a barrel of apples two years before. 
The owner of these trees invariably used the 
personal pronoun in speaking of them; as, 'T 
got him out of the woods, but he does n't bear." 
The largest that I saw in that neighborhood was 
nine feet high to the topmost leaf, and spread 
thirty-three feet, branching at the ground five 
ways. 

In one yard I observed a single, very healthy- 
looking tree, while all the rest were dead or 
dying. The occupant said that his father had 
manured all but that one with blackfish.' 

This habit of growth should, no doubt, be 
encouraged; and they should not be trimmed 
up, as some travelling practitioners have ad- 
vised. In 1802 there was not a single fruit-tree in 
Chatham, the next town to Orleans, on the 
south ; and the old account of Orleans says : 
*' Fruit-trees cannot be made to grow within a 
mile of the ocean. Even those which are placed 
at a greater distance are injured by the east 
winds; and, after violent storms in the spring, 
a saltish taste is perceptible on their bark." We 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 39 

noticed that they were often covered with a yel- 
low lichen- like rust, the Parmelia parietina. 

The most foreign and picturesque structures 
on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the 
salt-works, are the wind-mills, — gray-looking 
octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to 
the ground in the rear, and there resting on a 
cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round 
to face the wind. These appeared also to serve 
in some measure for props against its force. A 
great circular rut was worn around the building 
by the wheel. The neighbors who assemble to 
turn the mill to the wind are likely to know which 
way it blows, without a weathercock. They 
looked loose and slightly locomotive, like huge 
wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and re- 
minded one of pictures of the Netherlands. 
Being on elevated ground, and high in them- 
selves, they serve as landmarks, — for there are 
no tall trees, or other objects commonly, which 
can be seen at a distance in the horizon ; though 
the outline of the land itself is so firm and dis- 
tinct that an insignificant cone, or even precipice 
of sand, is visible at a great distance from over 
the sea. Sailors making the land commonly 
steer either by the wind-mills or the meeting- 
houses. In the country, we are obliged to steer 
by the meeting-houses alone. Yet the meeting- 
house is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day 
in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine 



40 CAPE COD 

or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of 
Heaven, where another sort of grist is ground, of 
which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not 
plaster, we trust to make bread of life. 

There were, here and there, heaps of shells in 
the fields, where clams had been opened for bait ; 
for Orleans is famous for its shell-fish, especially 
clams, or, as our author says, "to speak more 
properly, worms." The shores are more fertile 
than the dry land. The inhabitants measure 
their crops, not only by bushels of corn, but by 
barrels of clams. A thousand barrels of clam- 
bait are counted as equal in value to six or eight 
thousand bushels of Indian corn, and once they 
were procured without more labor or expense, 
and the supply was thought to be inexhaustible. 
"For," runs the history, "after a portion of the 
shore has been dug over, and almost all the clams 
taken up, at the end of two years, it is said, they 
are as plenty there as ever. It is even affirmed 
by many persons, that it is as necessary to stir 
the clam ground frequently as it is to hoe a field 
of potatoes ; because, if this labor is omitted, the 
clams will be crowded too closely together, and 
will be prevented from increasing in size." But 
we were told that the small clam, Mya arenaria, 
was not so plenty here as formerly. Probably 
the clam ground has been stirred too frequently, 
after all. Nevertheless, one man, who com- 
plained that they fed pigs with them and so 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 41 

made them scarce, told me that he dug and 
opened one hundred and twenty-six dollars' 
worth in one winter, in Truro. 

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen 
rods long, between Orleans and Eastham, called 
Jeremiah's Gutter. The Atlantic is said some- 
times to meet the Bay here, and isolate the 
northern part of the Cape. The stream^ of the 
Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale, 
since there is no room for them to run, without 
tumbling immediately into the sea; and beside, 
we found it difficult to run ourselves in that sand, 
when there was no want of room. Hence, the 
least channel where water runs, or may run, is 
important, and is dignified with a name. We 
read that there is no running water in Chatham, 
which is the next town. The barren aspect of 
the land would hardly be believed if described. 
It was such soil, or rather land, as, to judge from 
appearances, no farmer in the interior would 
think of cultivating, or even fencing. Generally, 
the ploughed fields of the Cape look white and 
yellow, like a mixture of salt and Indian meal. 
This is called soil. All an inlander's notions of 
soil and fertility will be confounded by a visit to 
these parts, and he will not be able, for some 
time afterward, to distinguish soil from sand. 
The historian of Chatham says of a part of 
that town, which has been gained from the sea : 
"There is a doubtful appearance of a soil be- 



42 CAPE COD 

ginning to be formed. It is styled doubtful, 
because it would not be observed by every eye, 
and perhaps not acknowledged by many." We 
thought that this would not be a bad description 
of the greater part of the Cape. There is a 
"beach" on the west side of Eastham, which we 
crossed the next summer, half a mile wide, and 
stretching across the township, containing seven- 
teen hundred acres, on which there is not now a 
particle of vegetable mould, though it formerly 
produced wheat. All sands are here called 
"beaches," whether they are waves of water or 
of air that dash against them, since they com- 
monly have their origin on the shore. "The 
sand in some places," says the historian of East- 
ham, "lodging against the beach-grass, has been 
raised into hills fifty feet high, where twenty-five 
years ago no hills existed. In others it has filled 
up small valleys, and swamps. Where a strong- 
rooted bush stood, the appearance is singular: 
a mass of earth and sand adheres to it, resem- 
bling a small tower. In several places, rocks, 
which were formerly covered with soil, are dis- 
closed, and being lashed by the sand, driven 
against them by the wind, look as if they were 
recently dug from a quarry." 

We were surprised to hear of the great crops 
of corn which are still raised in Eastham, not- 
withstanding the real and apparent barrenness. 
Our landlord in Orleans had told us that he 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 43 

raised three or four hundred bushels of corn 
annually, and also of the great number of pigs 
which he fattened. In Champlain's "Voyages," 
there is a plate representing the Indian cornfields 
hereabouts, with their wigwams in the midst, as 
they appeared in 1605, and it was here that the 
Pilgrims, to quote their own words, "bought 
eight or ten hogsheads of corn and beans'' of the 
Nauset Indians, in 1622, to keep themselves 
from starving/ "In 1667 the town [of Eastham] 
voted that every housekeeper should kill twelve 
blackbirds or three crows, which did great dam- 
age to the corn; and this vote was repeated for 
many years." In 1695 an additional order was 
passed, namely, that "every unmarried man in 
the township shall kill six blackbirds, or three 
crows, while he remains single ; as a penalty for 
not doing it, shall not be married until he obey 
this order." The blackbirds, however, still 
molest the corn. I saw them at it the next sum- 

* They touched after this at a place called Mattachiest, where 
they got more corn ; but their shallop being cast away in a storm, 
the Governor was obliged to return to Plymouth on foot, fifty 
miles through the woods. According to Mourt's Relation, "he 
came safely home, though weary and surbated," that is, foot-sore. 
(Ital. sobattere, Lat. sub or solea battere, to bruise the soles of the 
feet; v. Die. Not "from acerbatus, embittered or aggrieved," as 
one commentator on this passage supposes.) This word is of 
very rare occurrence, being applied only to governors and persons 
of like description, who are in that predicament; though such 
generally have considerable mileage allowed them, and might 
save their soles if they cared. 



44 CAPE COD 

mer, and there were many scarecrows, if not 
scare-blackbirds, in the fields, which I often mis- 
took for men. From which I concluded that 
either many men were not married, or many 
blackbirds were. Yet they put but three or four 
kernels in a hill, and let fewer plants remain 
than we do. In the account of Eastham, in the 
"Historical Collections," printed in 1802, it is 
said, that "more corn is produced than the in- 
habitants consume, and about a thousand bushels 
are annually sent to market. The soil being free 
frorn stones, a plough passes through it speedily ; 
and after the corn has come up, a small Cape 
horse, somewhat larger than a goat, will, with 
the assistance of two boys, easily hoe three or 
four acres in a day; several farmers are accus- 
tomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain 
annually, and not long since one raised eight 
hundred bushels on sixty acres.'' Similar ac- 
counts are given to-day ; indeed, the recent 
accounts are in some instances suspectable repe- 
titions of the old, and I have no doubt that their 
statements are as often founded on the exception 
as the rule, and that by far the greater number 
of acres are as barren as they appear to be. It is 
sufficiently remarkable that any crops can be 
raised here, and it may be owing, as others have 
suggested, to the amount of moisture in the at- 
mosphere, the warmth of the sand, and the 
rareness of frosts. A miller, who was sharpening 




A scarecrow 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 45 

his stones, told me that, forty years ago, he had 
been to a husking here, where five hundred 
bushels were husked in one evening, and the 
corn was piled six feet high or more, in the midst, 
but now, fifteen or eighteen bushels to an acre 
were an average yield. I never saw fields of such 
puny and unpromising looking corn as in this 
town. Probably the inhabitants are contented 
with small crops from a great surface easily cul- 
tivated. It is not always the most fertile land 
that is the most profitable, and this sand may 
repay cultivation, as well as the fertile bottoms 
of the West. It is said, moreover, that the vege- 
tables raised in the sand, without manure, are 
remarkably sweet, the pumpkins especially, 
though when their seed is planted in the interior 
they soon degenerate. I can testify that the 
vegetables here, when they succeed at all, look 
remarkably green and healthy, though perhaps 
it is partly by contrast with the sand. Yet the 
inhabitants of the Cape towns, generally, do not 
raise their own meal or pork. Their gardens are 
commonly little patches, that have been redeemed 
from the edges of the marshes and swamps. 

All the morning we had heard the sea roar on 
the eastern shore, which was several miles dis- 
tant ; for it still felt the effects of the storm in 
which the St. John was wrecked, — though a 
school-boy, whom we overtook, hardly knew 
what we meant, his ears were so used to it. He 



46 CAPE COD 

would have more plainly heard the same sound 
in a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to 
walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea 
dashing against the land, heard several miles 
inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before 
your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for 
a whole Cape ! On the whole, we were glad of 
the storm, which would show us the ocean in its 
angriest mood. Charles Darwin was assured 
that the roar of the surf on the coast of Chiloe, 
after a heavy gale, could be heard at night a 
distance of "21 sea miles across a hilly and 
wooded country." We conversed with the boy 
we have mentioned, who might have been eight 
years old, making him walk the while under the 
lee of our umbrella; for we thought it as im- 
portant to know what was life on the Cape to a 
boy as to a man. We learned from him where the 
best grapes were to be found in that neighbor- 
hood. He was carrying his dinner in a pail ; 
and, without any impertinent questions being 
put by us, it did at length appear of what it con- 
sisted. The homeliest facts are always the most 
acceptable to an inquiring mind. At length, 
before we got to Eastham meeting-house, we 
left the road and struck across the country for 
the eastern shore at Nauset Lights, — three 
lights close together, two or three miles distant 
from us. They were so many that they might 
be distinguished from others; but this seemed 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 47 

a shiftless and costly way of accomplishing that 
object. We found ourselves at once on an ap- 
parently boundless plain, without a tree or a 
fence, or, with one or two exceptions, a house in 
sight. Instead of fences, the earth was some- 
times thrown up into a slight ridge. My com- 
panion compared it to the rolling prairies of 
Illinois. In the storm of wind and rain which 
raged when we traversed it, it no doubt appeared 
more vast and desolate than it really is. As there 
were no hills, but only here and there a dry hol- 
low in the midst of the waste, and the distant 
horizon was concealed by mist, we did not know 
whether it was high or low. A solitary traveller 
whom we saw perambulating in the distance 
loomed like a giant. He appeared to walk 
slouchingly, as if held up from above by straps 
under his shoulders, as much as supported by 
the plain below. Men and boys would have 
appeared alike at a little distance, there being no 
object by which to measure them. Indeed, to 
an inlander, the Cape landscape is a constant 
mirage. This kind of country extended a mile 
or two each way. These were the "Plains of 
Nauset," once covered with wood, where in 
winter the winds howl and the snow blows right 
merrily in the face of the traveller. I was glad 
to have got out of the towns, where I am wont to 
feel unspeakably mean and disgraced, — to have 
left behind me for a season the bar-rooms of 



48 CAPE COD 

Massachusetts, where the full-grown are not 
weaned from savage and filthy habits, — still 
sucking a cigar. My spirits rose in proportion 
to the outward dreariness. The towns need to 
be ventilated. The gods would be pleased to see 
some pure flames from their altars. They are 
not to be appeased with cigar-smoke. 

As we thus skirted the back-side of the towns, 
for we did not enter any village, till we got to 
Provincetown, we read their histories under our 
umbrellas, rarely meeting anybody. The old 
accounts are the richest in topography, which 
was what we wanted most ; and, indeed, in most 
things else, for I find that the readable parts of 
the modern accounts of these towns consist, in a 
great measure, of quotations, acknowledged and 
unacknowledged, from the older ones, without 
any additional information of equal interest ; — 
town histories, which at length run into a history 
of the Church of that place, that being the only 
story they have to tell, and conclude by quoting 
the Latin epitaphs of the old pastors, having been 
written in the good old days of Latin and of 
Greek. They will go back to the ordination of 
every minister and tell you faithfully who made 
the introductory prayer, and who delivered the 
sermon; who made the ordaining prayer, and 
who gave the charge; who extended the right 
hand of fellowship, and who pronounced the 
benediction ; also how many ecclesiastical coun- 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 49 

cils convened from time to time to inquire into 
the orthodoxy of some minister, and the names 
of all who composed them. As it will take us an 
hour to get over this plain, and there is no variety 
in the prospect, peculiar as it is, I will read a 
little in the history of Eastham the while. 

When the committee from Plymouth had pur- 
chased the territory of Eastham of the Indians, 
"it was demanded, who laid claim to Billings- 
gate .^" which was understood to be all that part 
of the Cape north of what they had purchased. 
"The answer was, there was not any who owned 
it. 'Then,' said the committee, 'that land is 
ours.' The Indians answered, that it was." 
This was a remarkable assertion and admission. 
The Pilgrims appear to have regarded them- 
selves as Not Any's representatives. Perhaps 
this was the first instance of that quiet way of 
"speaking for" a place not yet occupied, or at 
least not improved as much as it may be, which 
their descendants have practised, and are still 
practising so extensively. Not Any seems to 
have been the sole proprietor of all America be- 
fore the Yankees. But history says that, when 
the Pilgrims had held the lands of Billingsgate 
many years, at length "appeared an Indian, 
who styled himself Lieutenant Anthony," who 
laid claim to them, and of him they bought them. 
Who knows but a Lieutenant Anthony may be 
knocking at the door of the White House some 



50 CAPE COD 

dav ? At anv rate, I know that if vou hold a 
thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to 
pay at last. 

Thomas Prince, who was several times the 
governor of the Plymouth colony, was the leader 
of the settlement of Eastham. There was re- 
cently standins:, on what was once his farm, in 
this town, a pear-tree which is said to have been 
brought from England, and planted there by him, 
about two hundred vears as^o. It was blown 
down a few months before we were there. A 
late account savs that it was recentlv in a vigor- 
ous state; the fruit small, but excellent; and it 
yielded on an average fifteen bushels. Some ap- 
propriate lines have been addressed to it, by a 
INIr. Heman Doane, from which I will quote, 
partly because they are the only specimen of 
Cape Cod verse which I remember to have seen, 
and partly because they are not bad. 

"Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time. 

Passed with their joys and woes, since thou, Old Tree ! 
Put forth thy first leaves in this foreign clime. 
Transplanted from the soil beyond the sea. 

« « * « 4: 

[These stars represent the more clerical lines, 
and also those which have deceased.] 

"That exiled band long since have passed away. 
And still. Old Tree I thou standest in the place 
Where Prince's hand did plant thee in his day, — 
An undesigned memorial of his race 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 51 

And time; of those out honored fathers, when 
They came from Plymouth o'er and settled here; 

Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men. 
Whose names their sons remember to revere. 

^ si: * ^ * 

"Old Time has thinned thy boughs. Old Pilgrim Tree! 
And bowed thee with the weight of many years; 
Yet 'mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see. 
And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears." 

There are some other Hues which I might 
quote, if they were not tied to unworthy com- 
panions by the rhyme. When one ox will lie 
down, the voke bears hard on him that stands 
up. 

One of the first settlers of Eastham was Deacon 
John Doane, who died in 1707, aged one hundred 
and ten. Tradition says that he was rocked in a 
cradle several of his last years. That, certainly, 
was not an Achillean life. His mother must have 
let him slip when she dipped him into the liquor 
which was to make him invulnerable, and he 
went in, heels and all. Some of the stone-bounds 
to his farm which he set up are standing to-day, 
with his initials cut in them. 

The ecclesiastical history of this town inter- 
ested us somewhat. It appears that "they very 
earlv built a small meetinfj-house, twentv feet 
square, with a thatched roof through which 
thev mioht fire their muskets," — of course, at 
the Devil. "In 166'2, the town agreed that a 



52 CAPE COD 

part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated 
for the support of the ministiy." No doubt there 
seemed to be some propriety in thus leaving the 
support of the ministers to Providence, whose 
servants they are, and who alone rules the storms ; 
for, when few whales were cast up, they might 
suspect that their worship was not acceptable. 
The ministers must have sat upon the cliffs in 
every storm, and watched the shore with anxiety. 
And, for my part, if I were a minister I would 
rather trust to the bowels of the billows, on the 
back-side of Cape Cod, to cast up a whale for me, 
than to the generosity of many a country parish 
that I know. You cannot say of a country min- 
ister's salary, commonly, that it is "very like a 
whale." Nevertheless, the minister who de- 
pended on whales cast up must have had a trying 
time of it. I would rather have gone to the Falk- 
land Isles with a harpoon, and done .with it. 
Think of a w hale having the breath of life beaten 
out of him by a storm, and dragging in over the 
bars and guzzles, for the support of the ministry ! 
What a consolation it must have been to him ! 
I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisher- 
man, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a 
time as he could tell a cod from a haddock. 
Generous as it seems, this condition would empty 
most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long 
since the fishers of men were fishermen. Also, a 
duty was put on mackerel here to support a free- 




S 
I 

C5 



s 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 53 

school ; in other words, the mackerel-school was 
taxed in order that the children's school might be 
free. "In 1665 the Court passed a law to inflict 
corporal punishment on all persons, who resided 
in the towns of this government, who denied the 
Scriptures." Think of a man being whipped on 
a spring morning till he was constrained to con- 
fess that the Scriptures were true ! "It was also 
voted by the town that all persons who should 
stand out of the meeting-house during the time 
of divine service should be set in the stocks." It 
behooved such a town to see that sitting" in the 
meeting-house was nothing akin to sitting in the 
stocks, lest the penalty of obedience to the law 
might be greater than that of disobedience. 
This was the Eastham famous of late years for 
its camp-meetings, held in a grove near by, to 
which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. 
We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps 
unusual, if not unhealthful, development of the 
religious sentiment here was the fact that a 
large portion of the population are women whose 
husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, 
or else drowned, and there is nobody but they 
and the ministers left behind. The old account 
says that "hysteric fits are very common in 
Orleans, Eastham, and the towns below, par- 
ticularly on Sunday, in the times of divine service. 
When one woman is affected, five or six others 
generally sympathize with her; and the congre- 



54 CAPE COD 

gation is thrown into the utmost confusion. 
Several old men suppose, unphilosophically and 
uncharitably, perhaps, that the will is partly 
concerned, and that ridicule and threats would 
have a tendency to prevent the e\al." How this 
is now we did not learn. We saw one singularlv 
masculine woman, however, in a house on this 
ver\' plain, who did not look as if she was ever 
troubled with hysterics, or sympathized with 
those that were ; or, perchance, life itself was to 
her a hysteric fit, — a Nauset woman, of a hard- 
ness and coarseness such as no man ever pos- 
sesses or suggests. It was enough to see the 
vertebrae and sinews of her neck, and her set 
jaws of iron, which would have bitten a board- 
nail in two in their ordinarv action, — braced 
against the world, talking like a man-of-war's- 
man in petticoats, or as if shouting to you through 
a breaker; who looked as if it made her head 
ache to live; hard enouoh for anv enormitv. I 
looked upon her as one who had committed in- 
fanticide; who never had a brother, unless it 
were some wee thins: that died in infancy, — for 
what need of him .^ — and whose father must 
have died before she was born. This woman 
told us that the camp-meetings were not held the 
previous summer for fear of introducing the 
cholera, and that they would have been held 
earlier this summer, but the rve was so back- 
ward that straw would not have been readv for 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 55 

them; for they He in straw. There are some- 
times one hundred and fifty ministers ( ! ) and 
five thousand hearers assembled. The ground, 
which is called Millennium Grove, is owned by 
a company in Boston, and is the most suitable, 
or rather unsuitable, for this purpose of any that 
I saw on the Cape. It is fenced, and the frames 
of the tents are at all times to be seen inter- 
spersed among the oaks. They have an oven 
and a pump, and keep all their kitchen utensils 
and tent coverings and furniture in a permanent 
building on the spot. They select a time for 
their meetings when the moon is full. A man is 
appointed to clear out the pump a week before- 
hand, while the ministers are clearing their 
throats ; but, probably, the latter do not always 
deliver as pure a stream as the former. I saw 
the heaps of clam-shells left under the tables, 
where they had feasted in previous summers, 
and supposed, of course, that that was the work 
of the unconverted, or the backsliders and 
scoffers. It looked as if a camp-meeting must be 
a singular combination of a prayer-meeting and 
a picnic. 

The first minister settled here was the Rev. 
Samuel Treat, in 1672, a gentleman who is said 
to be "entitled to a disting-uished rank among 
the evangelists of New England." He con- 
verted many Indians, as well as white men, in 
his day, and translated the Confession of Faith 



56 CAPE COD 

into the Nauset language. These were the In- 
dians concerning whom their first teacher, 
Richard Bourne, wrote to Gookin, in 1674, that 
he had been to see one who was sick, "and there 
came from him very savory and heavenly ex- 
pressions," but, with regard to the mass of them, 
he says, "the truth is, that many of them are 
very loose in their course, to my heartbreaking 
sorrow." Mr. Treat is described as a Calvinist 
of the strictest kind, not one of those who, by 
giving up or explaining away, become like a 
porcupine disarmed of its quills, but a consistent 
Calvinist, who can dart his quills to a distance 
and courageously defend himself. There exists 
a volume of his sermons in manuscript, "which," 
says a commentator, "appear to have been de- 
signed for publication." I quote the following 
sentences at second hand, from a Discourse on 
Luke xvi. 23, addressed to sinners : — 

"Thou must erelong go to the bottomless pit. 
Hell hath enlarged herself, and is ready to re- 
ceive thee. There is room enough for thy 
entertainment. . . . 

"Consider, thou art going to a place prepared 
by God on purpose to exalt his justice in, — a 
place made for no other employment but tor- 
ments. Hell is God's house of correction ; and, 
remember, God doth all things like himself. 
^Vhen God would show his justice, and what is 
the weight of his wrath, he makes a hell where it 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 57 

shall, indeed, appear to purpose. . . . Woe to 
thy soul when thou shalt be set up as a butt for 
the arrows of the Almighty. ... 

"Consider, God himself shall be the principal 
agent in thy misery, — his breath is the bellows 
which blows up the flame of hell forever ; — and 
if he punish thee, if he meet thee in his fury, he 
will not meet thee as a man ; he will give thee an 
omnipotent blow." 

"Some think sinning ends with this life; but 
it is a mistake. The creature is held under an 
everlasting law; the damned increase in sin in 
hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please 
thee. But, remember, there shall be no pleasant 
sins there; no eating, drinking, singing, danc- 
ing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen waters, 
but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; sins exas- 
perated by torments, cursing God, spite, rage, 
and blasphemy. — The guilt of all thy sins shall 
be laid upon thy soul, and be made so many 
heaps of fuel. . . . 

"Sinner, I beseech thee, realize the truth of 
these things. Do not go about to dream that 
this is derogatory to God's mercy, and nothing 
but a vain fable to scare children out of their wits 
withal. God can be merciful, though he make 
thee miserable. He shall have monuments 
enough of that precious attribute, shining like 
stars in the place of glory, and singing eternal 
hallelujahs to the praise of Him that redeemed 



58 CAPE COD 

them, though, to exalt the power of his justice, 
he damn sinners heaps upon heaps." 

"But," continues the same writer, "with the 
advantage of proclaiming the doctrine of terror, 
which is naturally productive of a sublime and 
impressive style of eloquence ('Triumphat ven- 
toso glorise curru orator, qui pectus angit, irritat, 
et implet terroribus.' Vid. Burnet, De Stat. 
Mort., p. 309), he could not attain the character 
of a popular preacher. His voice was so loud 
that it could be heard at a great distance from 
the meeting-house, even amidst the shrieks of 
hysterical women, and the winds that howled 
over the plains of Nauset ; but there was no more 
music in it than in the discordant sounds with 
which it was mingled." 

"The effect of such preaching," it is said, "was 
that his hearers were several times, in the course 
of his ministry, awakened and alarmed ;" and on 
one occasion a comparatively innocent young 
man was frightened nearly out of his wits, and 
Mr. Treat had to exert himself to make hell 
seem somewhat cooler to him"; yet we are as- 
sured that "Treat's manners were cheerful, his 
conversation pleasant, and sometimes facetious, 
but always decent. He was fond of a stroke of 
humor, and a practical joke, and manifested his 
relish for them bv lons^ and loud fits of laughter." 

This was the man of whom a well-known 
anecdote is told, which doubtless many of my 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 59 

readers have h^ard, but which, nevertheless, I 
will venture to quote : — 

"After his marriage with the daughter of Mr. 
Willard (pastor of the South Church in Boston), 
he was sometimes invited by that gentleman to 
preach in his pulpit. Mr. Willard possessed a 
graceful delivery, a masculine and harmonious 
voice ; and, though he did not gain much reputa- 
tion by his 'Body of Divinity,' which is frequently 
sneered at, particularly by those who have read 
it, yet in his sermons are strength of thought and 
energy of language. The natural consequence 
was that he was generally admired. Mr. Treat 
having preached one of his best discourses to the 
congregation of his father-in-law, in his usual 
unhappy manner, excited universal disgust ; and 
several nice judges waited on Mr. Willard, and 
begged that Mr. Treat, who was a worthy, pious 
man, it was true, but a wretched preacher, might 
never be invited into his pulpit again. To this 
request Mr. Willard made no reply ; but he de- 
sired his son-in-law to lend him the discourse; 
which being left with him, he delivered it with- 
out alteration to his people a few weeks after. 
They ran to Mr. Willard and requested a copy 
for the press. *See the difference,' they cried, 
* between yourself and your son-in-law; you 
have preached a sermon on the same text as Mr. 
Treat's, but whilst his was contemptible, yours 
is excellent.' As is observed in a note, 'Mr. 



60 CAPE COD 

Willard, after producing the sermon in the hand- 
writing of Mr. Treat, might have addressed 
these sage critics in the words of Phsedrus, 

"*En hie declarat. quales sitis judices.'"^ 

Mr. Treat died of a stroke of the palsy, just 
after the memorable storm known as the Great 
Snow, which left the ground around his house 
entirely bare, but heaped up the snow in the 
road to an uncommon height. Through this an 
arched way was dug, by which the Indians bore 
his bodv to the grave. 

The reader will imagine us, all the while, 
steadily traversing that extensive plain in a di- 
rection a little north of east toward Nauset 
Beach, and reading under our umbrellas as we 
sailed, while it blowed hard with mingled mist 
and rain, as if we were approaching a fit anni- 
versary of ]\Ir. Treat's funeral. \Ye fancied that 
it was such a moor as that on which somebody 
perished in the snow, as is related in the "Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life." 

The next minister settled here was the "Rev. 
Samuel Osborn, who was born in Ireland, and 
educated at the Universitv of Dublin." He is 
said to have been "A man of wisdom and virtue," 
and taught his people the use of peat, and the art 
of drying and preparing it, which as they had 
scarcely any other fuel, was a great blessing to 

* Lib. V. Fab. 5. 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 61 

them. He also introduced improvements in 
agriculture. But, notwithstanding his many 
services, as he embraced the religion of Armin- 
ius, some of his flock became dissatisfied. At 
length, an ecclesiastical council, consisting of 
ten ministers, with their churches, sat upon him, 
and they, naturally enough, spoiled his useful- 
ness. The council convened at the desire of two 
divine philosophers, — Joseph Doane and Na- 
thaniel Freeman. 

In their report they say, *'It appears to the 
council that the Rev. Mr. Osborn hath, in his 
preaching to this people, said, that what Christ 
did and suffered doth nothing abate or diminish 
our obligation to obey the law of God, and that 
Christ's suffering and obedience were for him- 
self ; both parts of which, we think, contain dan- 
gerous error." 

"Also : 'It hath been said, and doth appear to 
this council, that the Rev. Mr. Osborn, both in 
public and in private, asserted that there are no 
promises in the Bible but what are conditional, 
which we think, also, to be an error, and do say 
that there are promises which are absolute and 
without any condition, — such as the promise of 
a new heart, and that he will write his law in our 
hearts.'" 

"Also, they say, 'it hath been alleged, and 
doth appear to us, that Mr. Osborn hath de- 
clared, that obedience is a considerable cause of a 



62 CAPE COD 

person's justification, which, we think, contains 
very dangerous error.'" 

And many the hke distinctions they made, 
such as some of my readers, probably, are more 
famiHar with than I am. So, far in the East, 
among the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil, 
so-called, the Chaldseans, and others, according 
to the testimony of travellers, you may still hear 
these remarkable disputations on doctrinal points 
going on. Osborn was, accordingly, dismissed, 
and he removed to Boston, where he kept school 
for many years. But he was fully justified, me- 
thinks, by his works in the peat-meadow; one 
proof of which is, that he lived to be between 
ninety and one hundred years old. 

The next minister was the Rev. Benjamin 
Webb, of whom, though a neighboring clergy- 
man pronounced him "the best man and the 
best minister whom he ever knew," yet the his- 
torian says that, 

*' As he spent his days in the uniform discharge 
of his duty (it reminds one of a country muster) 
and there were no shades to give relief to his 
character, not much can be said of him. (Pity 
the Devil did not plant a few shade-trees along 
his avenues.) His heart was as pure as the new- 
fallen snow, which completely covers every dark 
spot in a field ; his mind was as serene as the sky 
in a mild evening in June, when the moon shines 
without a cloud. Name any virtue, and that vir- 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 63 

tue he practised ; name any vice, and that vice he 
shunned. But if pecuHar qualities marked his 
character, they were his humility, his gentleness, 
and his love of God. The people had long been 
taught by a son of thunder (Mr. Treat) : in him 
they were instructed by a son of consolation, who 
sweetly allured them to virtue by soft persuasion, 
and by exhibiting the mercy of the Supreme 
Being ; for his thoughts were so much in heaven 
that they seldom descended to the dismal regions 
below; and though of the same religious senti- 
ments as Mr. Treat, yet his attention was turned 
to those glad tidings of great joy which a Saviour 
came to publish." 

We were interested to hear that such a man 
had trodden the plains of Nauset. 

Turning over further in our book, our eyes fell 
on the name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom, of 
Orleans; "Senex emunctse naris, doctus, et 
auctor elegantium verborum, facetus, et dulcis 
festique sermonis." And, again, on that of the 
Rev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: "Vir humiHs, 
mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes; (there was 
need of him there ;) suis commodis in terra non 
studens, reconditis thesauris in coelo." An easy 
virtue that, there, for methinks no inhabitant of 
Dennis could be very studious about his earthly 
commodity, but must regard the bulk of his 
treasures as in heaven. But probably the most 
just and pertinent character of all is that which 



64 CAPE COD 



1 



appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim Briggs, 
of Chatham, in the language of the later Romans, 
''Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wechekum," — which 
not being interpreted, we know not what it means, 
though we have no doubt it occurs somewhere in 
the Scriptures, probably in the Apostle Eliot's 
Epistle to the Nipmucks. I 

Let no one think that I do not love the old 
ministers. They were, probably, the best men of 
their generation, and they deserve that their biog- 
raphies should fill the pages of the town his- 
tories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" 
of which they tell, and which, perchance, they 
heard, I might write in a worthier strain than 
this. 

There was no better way to make the reader 
realize how wide and peculiar that plain was, and 
how long it took to traverse it, than by inserting 
these extracts in the midst of my narrative. 



THE BEACH 

AT length we reached the seemingly retreat- 
/■\ ing boundary of the plain, and entered 
what had appeared at a distance an up- 
land marsh, but proved to be dry sand cov- 
ered with Beach-grass, the Bearberry, Bayberry, 
Shrub-oaks, and Beach-plum, slightly ascending 
as we approached the shore ; then, crossing over 
a belt of sand on which nothing grew, though the 
roar of the sea sounded scarcely louder than be- 
fore, and we were prepared to go half a mile far- 
ther, we suddenly stood on the edge of a bluff 
overlooking the Atlantic. Far below us was the 
beach, from half a dozen to a dozen rods in width, 
with a long line of breakers rushing to the strand. 
The sea was exceedingly dark and stormy, the 
sky completely overcast, the clouds still dropping 
rain, and the wind seemed to blow not so much 
as the exciting cause, as from sympathy with the 
already agitated ocean. The waves broke on the 
bars at some distance from the shore, and curv- 
ing green or yellow as if over so many unseen 
dams, ten or twelve feet high, like a thousand 
waterfalls, rolled in foam to the sand. There was 

5 



66 CAPE COD 

nothing but that savage ocean between us and 
Europe. 

Having got down the bank, and as close to the 
water as we could, where the sand was the hard- 
est, leaving the Nauset Lights behind us, we 
began to walk leisurely up the beach, in a north- 
west direction, towards Provincetown, which 
was about twenty-five miles distant, still sailing 
under our umbrellas with a strong aft wind, ad- 
miring in silence, as we walked, the great force 
of the ocean stream, — 

TTOTafiOLO fxiya a6ivo<; fi/ceavoto. 

The white breakers were rushing to the shore; 
the foam ran up the sand, and then ran back as 
far as we could see (and we imagined how much 
farther along the Altantic coast, before and be- 
hind us), as regularly, to compare great things 
with small, as the master of a choir beats time 
with his white wand ; and ever and anon a higher 
wave caused us hastily to deviate from our path, 
and we looked back on our tracks filled with 
water and foam. The breakers looked like droves 
of a thousand wild horses of Neptune, rushing to 
the shore, with their white manes streaming far 
behind ; and when at length the sun shone for a 
moment, their manes were rainbow- tinted. Also, 
the long kelp-weed was tossed up from time to 
time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the 
brine. 




A Cape Cod citizen 



THE BEACH 67 

There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none 
that day, — for they had all sought harbors in 
the late storm, and had not been able to get out 
again ; and the only human beings whom we saw 
on the beach for several days were one or two 
wreckers looking for drift-wood, and fragments 
of wrecked vessels. After an easterly storm in 
the spring, this beach is sometimes strewn with 
eastern wood from one end to the other, which, 
as it belongs to him who saves it, and the Cape 
is nearly destitute of wood, is a Godsend to the 
inhabitants. We soon met one of these wreckers, 
— a regular Cape Cod man, with whom we par- 
leyed, with a bleached and weather-beaten face, 
within whose wrinkles I distinguished no partic- 
ular feature. It was like an old sail endowed 
with life, — a hanging cliff of weather-beaten 
flesh, — like one of the clay boulders which oc- 
curred in that sand-bank. He had on a hat which 
had seen salt water, and a coat of many pieces 
and colors, though it was mainly the color of the 
beach, as if it had been sanded. His variegated 
back — for his coat had many patches, even 
between the shoulders — was a rich study to us, 
when we had passed him and looked round. It 
might have been dishonorable for him to have so 
many scars behind, it is true, if he had not had 
many more and more serious ones in front. He 
looked as if he sometimes saw a doughnut, but 
never descended to comfort ; too grave to laugh, 



68 CAPE COD 

too tough to cry; as indifferent as a clam, — like 
a sea-clam with hat on and legs, that was out 
walking the strand. He may have been one of 
the Pilgrims, — Peregrine ^^^lite, at least, — who 
has kept on the back-side of the Cape, and let the 
centuries go by. He was looking for wrecks, old 
logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles, 
or bits of boards and joists, even chips, which he 
drew out of the reach of the tide, and stacked up 
to dry. ^Vhen the log was too large to carry far, 
he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or 
rolling it a few feet appropriated it by sticking 
two sticks into the ground crosswise above it. 
Some rotten trunk, which in IVIaine cumbers the 
ground, and is, perchance, thrown into the water 
on purpose, is here thus carefully picked up, split 
and dried, and husbanded. Before winter the 
wrecker painfully carries these things up the 
bank on his shoulders by a long diagonal slant- 
ing path made with a hoe in the sand, if there is 
no hollow at hand. You may see his hooked 
pike-staff always lying on the bank ready for 
use. He is the true monarch of the beach, whose 
"right there is none to dispute," and he is as 
much identified with it as a beach-bird. 

Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes 
Dalagen's relation of the ways and usages of the 
Greenlanders, and says, "^^^loever finds drift- 
wood, or the spoils of a shipwreck on the strand, 
enjoys it as his own, though, he does not live 



THE BEACH 69 

there. But he must haul it ashore and lay a 
stone upon it, as a token that some one has taken 
possession of it, and this stone is the deed of 
security, for no other Greenlander will offer to 
meddle with it afterwards." Such is the in- 
stinctive law of nations. We have also this ac- 
count of drift-wood in Crantz: "As he (the 
Founder of Nature) has denied this frigid rocky 
region the growth of trees, he has bid the streams 
of the Ocean to convey to its shores a great deal 
of wood, which accordingly comes floating 
thither, part without ice, but the most part along 
with it, and lodges itself between the islands. 
Were it not for this, we Europeans should have no 
wood to burn there, and the poor Greenlanders 
(who, it is true, do not use wood, but train, for 
burning) would, however, have no wood to roof 
their houses, to erect their tents, as also to build 
their boats, and to shaft their arrows (yet there 
grew some small but crooked alders, &c.), by 
which they must procure their maintenance, 
clothing and train for warmth, light, and cook- 
ing. Among this wood are great trees torn up by 
the roots, which by driving up and down for 
many years and rubbing on the ice, are quite 
bare of branches and bark, and corroded with 
great wood- worms. A small part of this drift- 
wood are willows, alder and birch trees, which 
come out of the bays in the south of (i. e. Green- 
land) ; also large trunks of aspen-trees, which 



70 CAPE COD 

must come from a greater distance; but the 
greatest part is pine and fir. We find also a 
good deal of a sort of wood finely veined, with 
few branches ; this I fancy is larch- wood, which 
likes to decorate the sides of lofty, stony moun- 
tains. There is also a solid, reddish wood, of a 
more agreeable fragrance than the common fir, 
with visible cross-veins; which I take to be the 
same species as the beautiful silver-firs, or zirbel, 
that have the smell of cedar, and grow on the 
high Grison hills, and the Switzers wainscot their 
rooms with them." The wrecker directed us to a 
slight depression, called Snow's Hollow, by which 
we ascended the bank, — for elsewhere, if not 
difficult, it was inconvenient to climb it on ac- 
count of the sliding sand, which filled our shoes. 

This sand-bank — the backbone of the Cape 
— rose directly from the beach to the height of 
a hundred feet or more above the ocean. It was 
with singular emotions that we first stood upon 
it and discovered what a place we had chosen to 
walk on. On our right, beneath us, was the 
beach of smooth and gently sloping sand, a 
dozen rods in width; next, the endless series of 
white breakers; further still, the light green 
water over the bar, which runs the whole length 
of the forearm of the Cape, and beyond this 
stretched the unwearied and illimitable ocean. 
On our left, extending back from the veiy edge 
of the bank, was a perfect desert of shining sand. 



THE BEACH 71 

from thirty to eighty rods in width, skirted in the 
distance by small sand-hills fifteen or twenty 
feet high; between which, however, in some 
places, the sand penetrated as much farther. 
Next commenced the region of vegetation — 
a succession of small hills and valleys covered 
with shrubbery, now glowing with the brightest 
imaginable autumnal tints; and beyond this 
were seen, here and there, the waters of the bay. 
Here, in Wellfleet, this pure sand plateau, known 
to sailors as the Table Lands of Eastham, on 
account of its appearance, as seen from the 
ocean, and because it once made a part of that 
town, — full fifty rods in width, and in many 
places much more, and sometimes full one hun- 
dred and fifty feet above the ocean, — stretched 
away northward from the southern boundary of 
the town, without a particle of vegetation, — as 
level almost as a table, — for two and a half or 
three miles, or as far as the eye could reach; 
slightly rising towards the ocean, then stooping 
to the beach, by as steep a slope as sand could 
lie on, and as regular as a military engineer could 
desire. It was like the escarped rampart of a 
stupendous fortress, whose glacis was the beach, 
and whose champaign the ocean. — From its 
surface we overlooked the greater part of the 
Cape. In short, we were traversing a desert, 
with the view of an autumnal landscape of ex- 
traordinary brilliancy, a sort of Promised Land, 



72 CAPE COD 

on the one hand, and the ocean on the other. 
Yet, though the prospect was so extensive, and 
the country for the most part destitute of trees, a 
house was rarely visible, — we never saw one 
from the beach, — and the solitude was that of 
the ocean and the desert combined. A thousand 
men could not have seriously interrupted it, but 
would have been lost in the vastness of the scen- 
ery as their footsteps in the sand. 

The whole coast is so free from rocks, that we 
saw but one or two for more than twenty miles. 
The sand was soft like the beach, and trying to 
the eyes when the sun shone. A few piles of 
drift-wood, which some wreckers had painfully 
brought up the bank and stacked up there to 
dry, being the only objects in the desert, looked 
indefinitely large and distant, even like wigwams, 
though, when we stood near them, they proved 
to be insignificant little "jags" of wood. 

For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset 
Lights, the bank held its height, though farther 
north it was not so level as here, but interrupted 
by slight hollows, and the patches of Beach-grass 
and Bayberry frequently crept into the sand to 
its edge. There are some pages entitled "A de- 
scription of the Eastern Coast of the County of 
Barnstable," printed in 1802, pointing out the 
spots on which the Trustees of the Humane 
Society have erected huts called Charity or Hu- 
mane Houses, "and other places where ship- 



THE BEACH 73 

wrecked seamen may look for shelter." Two 
thousand copies of this were dispersed, that 
every vessel which frequented this coast might 
be provided with one. I have read this Ship- 
wrecked Seaman's Manual with a melancholy 
kind of interest, — for the sound of the surf, or, 
you might say, the moaning of the sea, is heard 
all through it, as if its author were the sole sur- 
vivor of a shipwreck himself. Of this part of the 
coast he says: "This highland approaches the 
ocean with steep and lofty banks, which it is ex- 
tremely diflScult to climb, especially in a storm. 
In violent tempests, during very high tides, the 
sea breaks against the foot of them, rendering it 
then unsafe to walk on the strand which lies be- 
tween them and the ocean. Should the seaman 
succeed in his attempt to ascend them, he must 
forbear to penetrate into the country, as houses 
are generally so remote that they would escape 
his research during the night; he must pass on 
to the valleys by which the banks are intersected. 
These valleys, which the inhabitants call Hol- 
lows, run at right angles with the shore, and in 
the middle or lowest part of them a road leads 
from the dwelling-houses to the sea." By the 
word road must not always be understood a visi- 
ble cart-track. 

There were these two roads for us, — an 
upper and a lower one, — the bank and the 
beach ; both stretching twenty-eight miles north- 



74 CAPE COD 

west, from Nauset Harbor to Race Point, without 
a single opening into the beach, and with hardly 
a serious interruption of the desert. If you were 
to ford the narrow and shallow inlet at Nauset 
Harbor, where there is not more than eight feet 
of water on the bar at full sea, you might walk ten 
or twelve miles farther, which would make a 
beach forty miles long, — and the bank and 
beach, on the east side of Nantucket, are but a 
continuation of these. I was comparatively 
satisfied. There I had got the Cape under me, 
as much as if I were riding it bare-backed. It 
was not as on the map, or seen from the stage- 
coach ; but there I found it all out of doors, huge 
and real, Cape Cod ! as it cannot be represented 
on a map, color it as you will ; the thing itself, 
than which there is nothing more like it, no truer 
picture or account ; which you cannot go farther 
and see. I cannot remember what I thought be- 
fore that it was. They commonly celebrate those 
beaches only which have a hotel on them, not 
those which have a Humane house alone. But I 
wished to see that seashore where man's works 
are wrecks ; to put up at the true Atlantic House, 
where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, 
and comes ashore without a wharf for the land- 
ing; where the crumbling land is the only in- 
valid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all 
you can say of it. 

We walked on quite at our leisure, now on the 



THE BEACH 75 

beach, now on the bank, — sitting from time to 
time on some damp log, maple or yellow birch, 
which had long followed the seas, but had now 
at last settled on land ; or under the lee of a sand- 
hill, on the bank, that we might gaze steadily on 
the ocean. The bank was so steep that, where 
there was no danger of its caving, we sat on its 
edge, as on a bench. It was diflicult for us lands- 
men to look out over the ocean without imagin- 
ing land in the horizon ; yet the clouds appeared 
to hang low over it, and rest on the water as they 
never do on the land, perhaps on account of 
the great distance to which we saw. The sand 
was not without advantage, for, though it was 
"heavy" walking in it, it was soft to the feet; 
and, notwithstanding that it had been raining 
nearly two days, when it held up for half an hour, 
the sides of the sand-hills, which were porous and 
sliding, afforded a dry seat. All the aspects of 
this desert are beautiful, whether you behold 
it in fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just 
breaking out after a storm, and shining on its 
moist surface in the distance, it is so white, and 
pure, and level, and each slight inequality and 
track is so distinctly revealed; and when your 
eyes slide off this, they fall on the ocean. In 
summer the mackerel gulls — which here have 
their nests among the neighboring sand-hills — 
pursue the traveller anxiously, now and then div- 
ing close to his head with a squeak, and he may 



76 CAPE COD 

see them, like swallows, chase some crow w^hich 
has been feeding on the beach, almost across the 
Cape. 

Though for some time I have not spoken of the 
roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless flux 
and reflux of the waves, yet they did not for a 
moment cease to dash and roar, with such a 
tumult that if you had been there, you could 
scarcely have heard my voice the while; and 
they are dashing and roaring this very moment, 
though it may be with less din and violence, for 
there the sea never rests. We were wholly ab- 
sorbed by this spectacle and tumult, and like 
Chryses, though in a different mood from him, 
we walked silent along the shore of the resound- 
ing sea, 

I put in a little Greek now and then, partly 
because it sounds so much like the ocean, — 
though I doubt if Homer's Mediterranean Sea 
ever sounded so loud as this. 

The attention of those who frequent the camp- 
meetings at Eastham is said to be divided be- 
tween the preaching of the Methodists and the 
preaching of the billows on the back-side of the 
Cape, for they all stream over here in the course 

* We have no word in English to express the sound of many 
waves, dashing at once, whether gently or violently, TroAix^Aoicr/Jotos 
to the ear, and, in the ocean's gentle moods, an avapiO^ov yeXacr/ia 
to the eve. 



THE BEACH 77 

of their stay. I trust that in this case the loudest 
voice carries it. With what effect may we sup- 
pose the ocean to say, "My hearers!" to the 
multitude on the bank ! On that side some John 
N. Maffit; on this, the Reverend Poluphlois- 
boios Thalassa. 

There was but little weed cast up here, and 
that kelp chiefly, there being scarcely a rock for 
rockweed to adhere to. Who has not had a 
vision from some vessel's deck, when he had still 
his land-legs on, of this great brown apron, drift- 
ing half upright, and quite submerged through 
the green water, clasping a stone or a deep-sea 
mussel in its unearthly fingers ? I have seen it 
carrying a stone half as large as my head. We 
sometimes watched a mass of this cable-like 
weed, as it was tossed up on the crest of a breaker, 
waiting with interest to see it come in, as if there 
were some treasure buoyed up by it; but we 
were always surprised and disappointed at the 
insignificance of the mass which had attracted us. 
As we looked out over the water, the smallest ob- 
jects floating on it appeared indefinitely large, 
we were so impressed by the vastness of the 
ocean, and each one bore so large a proportion to 
the whole ocean, which we saw. We were so 
often disappointed in the size of such things as 
came ashore, the ridiculous bits of wood or weed, 
with which the ocean labored, that we began to 
doubt whether the Atlantic itself would bear a 



78 CAPE COD 

still closer inspection, and wonld not turn out to 
be a but small pond, if it should come ashore to 
us. This kelp, oar-weed, tangle. deviFs-apron. 
sole-leather, or ribbon-weed. — as various spe- 
cies are called, — appeared to us a singularly 
marine and fabulous product, a lit invention for 
Xeptune to adorn his car with, or a freak of Pro- 
teus. All that is told of the sea has a fabulous 
sound to an inhabitant of the land, and all its 
products have a certain fabulous quality, as if 
they belonged to another planet, from sea-weed 
to a sailor's varn. or a tish-storv. In this element 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are 
strangely mingled. One species of kelp, accord- 
incj to Borv St. Vincent, has a stem tifteen hun- 
di*ed feet long, and hence is the longest vegetable 
known, and a brig's crew spent two days to no 
purpose collecting the trunks of another kind 
cast ashore on the Falkland Islands, mistakinor it 
for drift-wood. (See Harvey on Alga.^ This 
species looked almost edible; at least, I thought 
that if I were starvino: I would trv it. One sailor 
told me that the cows ate it. It cut like cheese : 
for I took the earliest opportunity to sit down and 
deliberately whittle up a fathom or two of it, that 
I might become more intimately acquainted with 
it, see how it cut, and if it were hollow all the wav 

ft 

through. The blade looked like a broad belt, 
whose edges had been quilled, or as if stretched 
by hammering, and it was also twisted spirally. 



THE BEACH 79 

The extremity was cjenerallv worn and ragired 
from the lashing of the waves. A piece of the 
stem which I carried home shrunk to one quarter 
of its size a week afterward, and was completely 
covered with crvstals of salt like frost. The 
reader will excuse mv ijreenness. — though it is 
not sea-greenness, like his, perchance, — for I 
live bv a river-shore, where this weed does not 
wash up. When we consider in what meadows 
it irrew. and how it was raked, and in what kind 
of hav weather o-ot in or out. we mav well be 
curious about it. One who is weatherwise has 
ijiven the foUowinor account of the matter. 

"When desicends on the Atlantic 
The gig:uitic 
Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Lixndward ui his \\-rath he scourges 

The toiling surges. 
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks. 

"From Bermuda's reefs, from edges 
Of sunken ledges. 
On some far-otf bright Azore; 
From Bahama and the dashing, 
Silver-flashing 
Sui^s of S;ui Salvador; 

"From the trembling surf that buries 
The Orknevan Skerries. 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides; 
And from wrecks and ships and drifting 
Spjirs. uplifting 
On the desolate rainv seas; 



80 CAPE COD 

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main." 

But he was not thinking of this shore, when he 
added : — 

"Till, in sheltered coves and reaches 
Of sandy beaches. 
All have found repose again." 

These weeds were the symbols of those gro- 
tesque and fabulous thoughts which have not 
yet got into the sheltered coves of literature. 

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart," 
And not yet "in books recorded 
They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depart." 

The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea- 
jellies, which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one 
of the lowest forms of animal life, some white, 
some wine-colored, and a foot in diameter. I at 
first thought that they were a tender part of some 
marine monster, which the storm or some other 
foe had mangled. What right has the sea to bear 
in its bosom such tender things as sea-jellies and 
mosses, when it has such a boisterous shore that 
the stoutest fabrics are wrecked against it? 
.Strange that it should undertake to dandle such 
delicate children in its arm. I did not at first 



THE BEACH 81 

recognize these for the same which I had formerly 
seen in myriads in Boston Harbor, rising, with a 
waving motion, to the surface, as if to meet the 
sun, and discoloring the waters far and wide, so 
that I seemed to be sailing through a mere sunfish 
soup. They say that when you endeavor to take 
one up, it will spill out the other side of your hand 
like quicksilver. Before the land rose out of the 
ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned ; and 
between high and low water mark, where she is 
partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos 
reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can 
inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all the while flying 
over our heads and amid the breakers, some- 
times two white ones pursuing a black one; 
quite at home in the storm, though they are as 
delicate organizations as sea-jellies and mosses; 
and we saw that they were adapted to their cir- 
cumstances rather by their spirits than their 
bodies. Theirs must be an essentially wilder, 
that is, less human, nature than that of larks and 
robins. Their note was like the sound of some 
vibrating metal, and harmonized well with the 
scenery and the roar of the surf, as if one had 
rudely touched the strings of the lyre, which ever 
lies on the shore ; a ragged shred of ocean music 
tossed aloft on the spray. But if I were required 
to name a sound the remembrance of which 
most perfectly revives the impression which the 
beach has made, it would be the dreary peep of 



82 CAPE COD 

the piping plover {Charadrius melodus) which 
haunts there. Their voices, too, are heard as a 
fugacious part in the dirge which is ever played 
along the shore for those mariners who have been 
lost in the deep since first it was created. But 
through all this dreariness we seemed to have a 
pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody, 
for always the same strain which is a dirge to one 
household is a morning song of rejoicing to 
another. 

A remarkable method of catching gulls, de- 
rived from the Indians, was practised in Well- 
fleet in 1794. "The Gull House," it is said, "is 
built with crotchets, fixed in the ground on the 
beach," poles being stretched across for the top, 
and the sides made close with stakes and sea- 
weed. "The poles on the top are covered with 
lean whale. The man being placed within, is 
not discovered by the fowls, and while they are 
contending for and eating the flesh, he draws 
them in, one by one, between the poles, until he 
has collected forty or fifty." Hence, perchance, 
a man is said to be gulled, when he is taken in. 
We read that one "sort of gulls is called by the 
Dutch mallemucke, i. e. the foolish fly, because 
they fall upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and, 
indeed, all gulls are foolishly bold and easy to be 
shot. The Norwegians call this bird havhest, 
sea-horse (and the English translator says, it is 
probably what we call boobies). If they have 



THE BEACH 83 

eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it 
again till they are tired. It is this habit in the 
gulls of parting with their property [disgorging 
the contents of their stomachs to the skuas], 
which has given rise to the terms gull, guller, and 
gulling, among men." We also read that they 
used to kill small birds which roosted on the 
beach at night, by making a fire with hog's lard 
in a frying-pan. The Indians probably used 
pine torches ; the birds flocked to the light, and 
were knocked down with a stick. We noticed 
holes dug near the edge of the bank, where gun- 
ners conceal themselves to shoot the large gulls 
which coast up and down a-fishing, for these are 
considered good to eat. 

We found some large clams of the species 
Mactra solidissima, which the storm had torn up 
from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected one 
of the largest, about six inches in length, and 
carried it along, thinking to try an experiment 
on it. We soon after met a wrecker, with a grap- 
ple and a rope, who said that he was looking for 
tow cloth, which had made part of the cargo of 
the ship Franklin, which was wrecked here in the 
spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost. 
The reader may remember this wreck, from the 
circumstance that a letter was found in the cap- 
tain's valise, which washed ashore, directing him 
to wreck the vessel before he got to America, and 
from the trial which took place in consequence. 



84 CAPE COD 

The wrecker said that tow cloth was still cast up 
in such storms as this. He also told us that the 
clam which I had was the sea-clam, or hen, and 
was good to eat. We took our nooning under a 
sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary 
little hollow, on the top of the bank, while it al- 
ternately rained and shined. There, having re- 
duced some damp drift-wood, which I had picked 
up on the shore, to shavings with my knife, I 
kindled a fire with a match and some paper and 
cooked my clam on the embers for my dinner; 
for breakfast was commonly the only meal which 
I took in a house on this excursion. When the 
clam was done, one valve held the meat and the 
other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I 
found it sweet and savory, and ate the whole with 
a relish. Indeed, with the addition of a cracker 
or two, it would have been a bountiful dinner. I 
noticed that the shells were such as I had seen in 
the sugar-kit at home. Tied to a stick, they for- 
merly made the Indian's hoe hereabouts. 

At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had 
two or three rainbows over the sea, the showers 
ceased, and the heavens gradually cleared up, 
though the wind still blowed as hard and the 
breakers ran as high as before. Keeping on, we 
soon after came to a Charity-house, which we 
looked into to see how the shipwrecked mariner 
might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow 
by the sea-side, just within the bank, stands a 



THE BEACH 85 

lonely building on piles driven into the sand, with 
a slight nail put through the staple, which a freez- 
ing man can bend, with some straw, perchance, 
on the floor on which he may lie, or which he may 
burn in the fireplace to keep him alive. Perhaps 
this hut has never been required to shelter a ship- 
wrecked man, and the benevolent person who 
promised to inspect it annually, to see that the 
straw and matches are here, and that the boards 
will keep ofT the wind, has grown remiss and 
thinks that storms and shipwrecks are over; 
and this very night a perishing crew may pry 
open its door with their numbed fingers and 
leave half their number dead here by morning. 
When I thought what must be the condition of the 
families which alone would ever occupy or had 
occupied them, what must have been the tragedy 
of the winter evenings spent by human beings 
around their hearths, these houses, though they 
were meant for human dwellings, did not look 
cheerful to me. They appeared but a stage to 
the grave. The gulls flew around and screamed 
over them ; the roar of the ocean in storms, and 
the lapse of its waves in calms, alone resounds 
through them, all dark and empty within, year 
in, year out, except, perchance, on one memora- 
ble night. Houses of entertainment for ship- 
wrecked men ! What kind of sailors' homes 
were they ? 

"Each hut," says the author of the "Descrip- 



86 CAPE COD 

tion of the Eastern Coast of the County of Barn- 
stable," "stands on piles, is eight feet long, eight 
feet wide, and seven feet high ; a sliding door is 
on the south, a sliding shutter on the west, and a 
pole, rising fifteen feet above the top of the build- 
ing, on the east. Within it is supplied either with 
straw or hay, and is further accommodated with a 
bench." They have varied little from this model 
now. There are similar huts at the Isle of Sable 
and Anticosti, on the north, and how far south 
along the coast I know not. It is pathetic to read 
, the minute and faithful directions which he gives 
to seamen who rnay be wrecked on this coast, to 
guide them to the nearest Charity-house, or other 
shelter, for, as is said of Eastham, though there 
are a few houses within a mile of the shore, yet 
"in a snow-storm, which rages here with exces- 
sive fury, it would be almost impossible to dis- 
cover them either by night or by day." You hear 
their imaginary guide thus marshalling, cheering, 
directing the dripping, shivering, freezing troop 
along; "at the entrance of this valley the sand 
has gathered, so that at present a little climbing 
is necessary. Passing over several fences and 
taking heed not to enter the wood on the right 
hand, at the distance of three-quarters of a mile 
a house is to be found. This house stands on the 
south side of the road, and not far from it on the 
south is Pamet River, which runs from east to 
west through body of salt marsh." To him cast 



THE BEACH 87 

ashore in Eastham, he says, "The meeting-house 
is without a steeple, but it may be distinguished 
from the dwelling-houses near it by its situation, 
which is between two small groves of locusts, one 
on the south and one on the north, — that on the 
south being three times as long as the other. 
About a mile and a quarter from the hut, west 
by north, appear the top and arms of a windmill." 
And so on for many pages. 

We did not learn whether these houses had 
been the means of saving any lives, though this 
writer says, of one erected at the head of Stout's 
Creek in Truro, that "it was built in an im- 
proper manner, having a chimney in it ; and was 
placed on a spot where no beach-grass grew. The 
strong winds blew the sand from its foundation 
and the weight of the chimney brought it to the 
ground ; so that in January of the present year 
[1802] it was entirely demolished. This event 
took place about six weeks before the Brutus 
was cast away. If it had remained, it is probable 
that the whole of the unfortunate crew of that 
ship would have been saved, as they gained the 
shore a few rods only from the spot where the 
hut had stood." 

This "Charity-house," as the wrecker called 
it, this "Humane-house," as some call it, that is, 
the one to which we first came, had neither win- 
dow nor sliding shutter, nor clapboards, nor 
paint. As we have said, there was a rusty nail 



88 CAPE COD 

put through the staple. However, as we wished 
to get an idea of a Humane house, and we hoped 
that we should never have a better opportunity, 
we put our eyes, by turns, to a knot-hole in the 
door, and after long looking, without seeing, 
into the dark, — not knowing how many ship- 
wrecked men's bones we might see at last, look- 
ing with the eye of faith, knowing that, though 
to him that knocketh it may not always be 
opened, yet to him that looketh long enough 
through a knot-hole the inside shall be visible, — 
for we had had some practice at looking inward, 

— by steadily keeping our other ball covered 
from the light meanwhile, putting the outward 
world behind us, ocean and land, and the beach, 

— till the pupil became enlarged and collected 
the rays of light that were wandering in that dark 
(for the pupil shall be enlarged by looking ; there 
never was so dark a night but a faithful and 
patient eye, however small, might at last prevail 
over it), — after all this, I say, things began to 
take shape to our vision, — if we may use this 
expression where there was nothing but empti- 
ness, — and we obtained the long-wished-for 
insight. Though we thought at first that it was 
a hopeless case, after several minutes' steady 
exercise of the divine faculty, our prospects be- 
gan decidedly to brighten, and we were ready to 
exclaim with the blind bard of "Paradise Lost 
and Regained," — 



THE BEACH 89 

"Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first born, 
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam. 
May I express thee unblamed ? " 

A little longer, and a chimney rushed red on 
our sight. In short, when our vision had grown 
familiar with the darkness, we discovered that 
there were some stones and some loose wads of 
wool on the floor, and an empty fireplace at the 
further end; but it was not supplied with 
matches, or straw, or hay, that we could see, nor 
"accommodated with a bench." Indeed, it was 
the wreck of all cpsmical beauty there within. 

Turning our backs on the outward world, we 
thus looked through the knot-hole into the Hu- 
mane house, into the very bowels of mercy ; and 
for bread we found a stone. It was literally a 
great cry (of sea-mews outside), and a little wool. 
However, we were glad to sit outside, under the 
lee of the Humane house, to escape the piercing 
wind ; and there we thought how cold is charity ! 
how inhumane humanity ! This, then, is what 
charity hides ! Virtues antique and far away 
with ever a rusty nail over the latch; and very 
difficult to keep in repair, withal, it is so uncer- 
tain whether any will ever gain the beach near 
you. So we shivered round about, not being 
able to get into it, ever and anon looking through 
the knot-hole into that night without a star, 
until we concluded that it was not a humane 
house at all, but a sea-side box, now shut up. 



90 CAPE COD 

belonging to some of the family of Night or 
Chaos, where they spent their summers by the 
sea, for the sake of the sea breeze, and that it 
was not proper for us to be prying into their 
concerns. 

My companion had declared before this that I 
had not a particle of sentiment, in rather abso- 
lute terms, to my astonishment; but I suspect 
he meant that my legs did not ache just then, 
though I am not wholly a stranger to that senti- 
ment. But I did not intend this for a senti- 
mental journey. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 

HAVING walked about eight miles since 
we struck the beach, and passed the 
boundary between Wellfleet and Truro, 
a stone post in the sand, — for even this sand 
comes under the jurisdiction of one town or an- 
other, — we turned inland over barren hills and 
valleys, whither the sea, for some reason, did not 
follow us, and, tracing up a Hollow, discovered 
two or three sober-looking houses within half a 
mile, uncommonly near the eastern coast. Their 
garrets were apparently so full of chambers, that 
their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and 
we did not doubt that there was room for us 
there. Houses near the sea are generally low 
and broad. These were a story and a half high ; 
but if you merely counted the windows in their 
gable-ends, you would think that there were 
many stories more, or, at any rate, that the half- 
story was the only one thought worthy of being 
illustrated. The great number of windows in 
the ends of the houses, and their irregularity in 
size and position, here and elsewhere on the Cape, 
struck us agreeably, — as if each of the various 
occupants who had their cunabula behind had 



92 CAPE COD 

punched a hole where his necessities required it, 
and, according to his size and stature, without 
regard to outside effect. There were windows 
for the grown folks, and windows for the chil- 
dren, — three or four apiece ; as a certain man 
had a large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, 
and another smaller one for the kitten. Some- 
times they were so low under the eaves that I 
thought they must have perforated the plate 
beam for another apartment, and I noticed some 
which were triangular, to fit that part more ex- 
actly. The ends of the houses had thus as many 
muzzles as a revolver, and, if the inhabitants have 
the same habit of staring out the windows that 
some of our neighbors have, a traveller must 
stand a small chance with them. 

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted 
houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as 
well as picturesque, than the modern and more 
pretending ones, which were less in harmony 
with the scenery, and less firmly planted. 

These houses were on the shores of a chain of 
ponds, seven in number, the source of a small 
stream called Herring River, which empties into 
the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers on the 
Cape; they will, perhaps, be more numerous 
than herrings soon. We knocked at the door of 
the first house, but its inhabitants were all gone 
away. In the meanwhile, we saw the occupants 
of the next one looking out the window at us. 








'3 



<! 









X 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 93 

and before we reached it an old woman came 
out and fastened the door of her bulkhead, and 
went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesi- 
tate to knock at her door, when a grizzly-looking 
man appeared, whom we took to be sixty or 
seventy years old. He asked us, at first, sus- 
piciously, where we were from, and what our 
business was; to which we returned plain 
answers. 

"How far is Concord from Boston.?" he 
inquired. 

"Twenty miles by railroad." 

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated. 

"Did n't you ever hear of Concord of Revolu- 
tionary fame.?" 

"Didn't I ever hear of Concord.? Why, I 
heard the guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill. 
[They hear the sound of heavy cannon across 
the Bay.] I am almost ninety ; I am eighty-eight 
year old. I was fourteen year old at the time 
of Concord Fight, — and where were you then .?" 

We were obliged to confess that we were not 
in the fight. 

"Well, walk in, we'll leave it to the women," 
said he. 

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an 
old woman taking our hats and bundles, and the 
old man continued, drawing up to the large, old- 
fashioned fireplace, — 

I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as 



(( ' 



94 CAPE COD 

Isaiah says ; I am all broken down this year. I 
am under petticoat government here." 

The family consisted of the old man, his wife, 
and his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as 
her mother, a fool, her son (a brutish-looking, 
middle-aged man, with a prominent lower face, 
who was standing by the hearth when we en- 
tered, but immediately went out), and a little 
boy of ten. 

While my companion talked with the women, 
I talked with the old man. They said that he 
was old and foolish, but he was evidently too 
knowing for them. 

"These women," said he to me, "are both of 
them poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one 
is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. 
She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an 
adder, and the other is not much better." 

He thought well of the Bible, or at least he 
s'poke well, and did not think ill, of it, for that 
would not have been prudent for a man of his 
age. He said that he had read it attentively for 
many years, and he had much of it at his tongue's 
end. He seemed deeply impressed with a sense 
of his own nothingness, and would repeatedly 
exclaim, — 

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my 
Bible is just this : that man is a poor good-for- 
nothing crittur, and everything is just as God 
sees fit and disposes." 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 95 

"May I ask your name?" I said. 

"Yes," he answered, "I am not ashamed to 
tell my name. My name is . My great- 
grandfather came over from England and set- 
tled here." 

He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had 
acquired a competency in that business, and had 
sons still engaged in it. 

Nearly all the oyster shops and stands in 
Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept 
by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is 
still called Billingsgate from the oysters having 
been formerly planted there; but the native 
oysters are said to have died^in 1770. Various 
causes are assigned for this, such as a ground 
frost, the carcasses of blackfish kept to rot in 
the harbor, and the like, but the most common 
account of the matter is, — and I find that a 
similar superstition with regard to the disap- 
pearance of fishes exists almost everywhere, — 
that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the 
neighboring towns about the right to gather them, 
yellow specks appeared in them, and Providence 
caused them to disappear. A few years ago 
sixty thousand bushels were annually brought 
from the South and planted in the harbor of 
Wellfleet till they attained "the proper relish of 
Billingsgate"; but now they are imported com- 
monly full-grown, and laid down near their mar- 
kets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water. 



96 CAPE COD 

being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them 
better. The business was said to be still good 
and improving. 

The old man said that the oysters were liable 
to freeze in the winter, if planted too high ; but 
if it were not "so cold as to strain their eyes" 
they were not injured. The inhabitants of New 
Brunswick have noticed that "ice will not form 
over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very intense 
indeed, and when the bays are frozen over the 
oyster-beds are easily discovered by the water 
above them remaining unfrozen, or as the French 
residents say, degele." Our host said that they 
kept them in cellars all winter. 

"Without anything to eat or drink .?" I asked. 

"Without anything to eat or drink," he 
answered. 

"Can the oysters move.?" 

"Just as much as my shoe." 

But when I caught him saying that they 
"bedded themselves down in the sand, flat side 
up, round side down," I told him that my shoe 
could not do that, without the aid of my foot in 
it; at which he said that they merely settled 
down as they grew ; if put down in a square they 
would be found so; but the clam could move 
quite fast. I have since been told by oystermen 
of Long Island, where the oyster is still indige- 
nous and abundant, that they are found in large 
masses attached to the parent in their midst, and 







J IVellJieet oystennan 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 97 

are so taken up with their tongs ; in which case, 
they say, the age of the young proves that there 
could have been no motion for five or six years at 
least. And Buckland in his Curiosities of Natu- 
ral History (page 50) says: "An oyster who has 
once taken up his position and fixed himself 
when quite young can never make a change. 
Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed them- 
selves, but remain loose at the bottom of the sea, 
have the power of locomotion; they open their 
shells to their fullest extent, and then suddenly 
contracting them, the expulsion of the water 
forwards gives a motion backwards. A fisher- 
man at Guernsey told me that he had frequently 
seen oysters moving in this way." 

Some still entertain the question "whether the 
oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts Bay," 
and whether Wellfleet harbor was a "natural 
habitat" of this fish; but, to say nothing of the 
testimony of old oystermen, which, I think, is 
quite conclusive, though the native oyster may 
now be extinct there, I saw that their shells, 
opened by the Indians, were strewn all over the 
Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly 
settled by Indians on account of the abundance 
of these and other fish. We saw many traces of 
their occupancy after this, in Truro, near Great 
Hollow, and at High-Head, near East Harbor 
River, — oysters, clams, cockles, and other shells, 
mingled with ashes and the bones of deer and 



98 CAPE COD 

other quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen 
arrow-heads, and in an hour or two could have 
filled my pockets with them. The Indians lived 
about the edges of the swamps, then probably 
in some instances ponds, for shelter and water. 
Moreover, Champlain in the edition of his "Voy- 
ages" printed in 1613, says that in the year 1606 
he and Poitrincourt explored a harbor (Barn- 
stable Harbor ?) in the southerly part of what is 
now called Massachusetts Bay, in latitude 42°, 
about five leagues south, one point west of Cap 
Blanc (Cape Cod), and there they found many 
good oysters, and they named it "/e Port aux 
Huistres'' ^^ Oyster Harbor). In one edition of 
his map (1632), the ''R. aux Escailles'' is drawn 
emptying into the same part of the bay, and on 
the map '' Novi Belgii,'' in Ogilby's "America " 
(1670), the words "Por/ aux Huistres'' are 
placed against the same place. Also William 
Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks, 
in his "New England's Prospect," published in 
1634, of "a great oyster-bank" in Charles River, 
and of another in the Mistick, each of which 
obstructed the navigation of its river. "The 
oysters," says he, "be great ones in form of a 
shoehorn ; some be a foot long ; these breed on 
certain banks that are bare every spring tide. 
This fish without the shell is so big, that it must 
admit of a division before you can well get it into 
your mouth." Oysters are still found there. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 99 

(Also, see Thomas Morton's " New English 
Canaan," page 90.) 

Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was 
not easily obtained ; it was raked up, but never 
on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore there in 
small quantities in storms. The fisherman 
sometimes wades in water several feet deep, and 
thrusts a pointed stick into the sand before him. 
When this enters between the valves of a clam, he 
closes them on it, and is drawn out. It has been 
known to catch and hold coot and teal which 
were preying on it. . I chanced to be on the bank 
of the Acushnet at New Bedford one day since 
this, watching some ducks, when a man informed 
me that, having let out his young ducks to seek 
their food amid the samphire {Salicornia) and 
other weeds along the river-side at low tide that 
morning, at length he noticed that one remained 
stationary, amid the weeds, something preventing 
it from following the others, and going to it he 
found its foot tightly shut in a quahog's shell. 
He took up both together, carried them to his 
home, and his wife opening the shell with a knife 
released the duck and cooked the quahog. The 
old man said that the great clams were good to 
eat, but that they always took out a certain part 
which was poisonous, before they cooked them. 
"People said it would kill a cat." I did not tell 
him that I had eaten a lar^e one entire that after- 
noon, but began to think that I was tougher than 



100 CAPE COD 

a cat. He stated that pedlers came round there, 
and sometimes tried to sell the women folks a 
skimmer, but he told them that their women had 
got a better skimmer than they could make, in 
the shell of their clams ; it was shaped just right 
for this purpose. — They call them "skim-alls" 
in some places. He also said that the sun-squall 
was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors 
came across it, they did not meddle with it, but 
heaved it out of their way. I told him that I had 
handled it that afternoon, and had felt no ill 
effects as yet. But he said it made the hands 
itch, especially if they had previously been 
scratched, or if I put it into my bosom I should 
find out what it was. 

He informed us that no ice ever formed on the 
back side of the Cape, or not more than once in 
a century, and but little snow lay there, it being 
either absorbed or blown or washed away. 
Sometimes in winter, when the tide was down, 
the beach was frozen, and afforded a hard road 
up the back side for some thirty miles, as smooth 
as a floor. One winter when he was a boy, he 
and his father "took right out into the back side 
before daylight, and walked to Provincetown 
and back to dinner." 

When I asked what they did with all that 
barren-looking land, where I saw so few culti- 
vated fields, — "Nothing," he said. 

"Then why fence your fields.''" 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 101 

*'To keep the sand from blowing and covering 
up the whole." 

*'The yellow sand," said he, "has some life in 
it, but the white little or none." 

When, in answer to his questions, I told him 
that I was a surveyor, he said that they who sur- 
veyed his farm were accustomed, where the 
ground was uneven, to loop up each chain as 
high as their elbows; that was the allowance 
they made, and he wished to know if I could tell 
him why they did not come out according to his 
deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have more 
respect for surveyors of the old school, which I 
did not wonder at. "King George the Third," 
said he, "laid out a road four rods wide and 
straight the whole length of the Cape," but 
where it was now he could not tell. 

This story of the surveyors reminded me of a 
Long-Islander, who once, when I had made 
ready to jump from the bow of his boat to the 
shore, and he thought that I underrated the dis- 
tance and would fall short, — though I found 
afterward that he judged of the elasticity of my 
joints by his own, — told me that when he came 
to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held 
up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to 
cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew 
that he could jump it. "Why," I told him, "to 
say nothing of the Mississippi, and other small 
watery streams, I could blot out a star with my 



102 CAPE COD 

foot, but I would not engage to jump that dis- 
tance," and asked how he knew when he had ffot 
his leg at the right elevation. But he regarded 
his legs as no less accurate than a pair of screw 
dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and appeared 
to have a painful recollection of every degree and 
minute in the arc which they described ; and he 
would have had me believe that there was a 
kind of hitch in his hip-joint which answered the 
purpose. I suggested that he should connect 
his two ankles by a string of the proper length, 
w^hich should be the chord of an arc, measuring 
his jumping ability on horizontal surfaces, — 
assuming one leg to be a perpendicular to the 
plane of the horizon, which, however, may have 
been too bold an assumption in this case. Never- 
theless, this was a kind of geometry in the legs 
which it interested me to hear of. 

Our host took pleasure in telling us the names 
of the ponds, most of which we could see from 
his windows, and making us repeat them after 
him, to see if we had got them right. They were 
Gull Pond, the largest and a very handsome one, 
clear and deep, and more than a mile in circum- 
ference, Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse- 
Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds, all connected 
at high water, if I do not mistake. The coast- 
surveyors had come to him for their names, and 
he told them of one which they had not detected. 
He said that they were not so high as formerly. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 103 

There was an earthquake about four years before 
he was born, which cracked the pans of the 
ponds, which were of iron, and caused them to 
settle. I did not remember to have read of this. 
Innumerable gulls used to resort to them ; but 
the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he 
said, the English robbed their nests far in the 
north, where they breed. He remembered well 
when gulls were taken in the gull-house, and 
when small birds were killed by means of a 
frying-pan and fire at night. His father once 
lost a valuable horse from this cause. A party 
from Wellfleet having lighted their fire for this 
purpose, one dark night, on Billingsgate Island, 
twenty horses which were pastured there, and 
this colt among them, being frightened by it, and 
endeavoring in the dark to cross the passage 
which separated them from the neighboring 
beach, and which was then fordable at low tide, 
were all swept out to sea and drowned. I ob- 
served that many horses were still turned out to 
pasture all summer on the islands and beaches 
in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind 
of common. He also described the killing of 
what he called "wild hens" here, after they had 
gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. 
Perhaps they were "Prairie hens" (pinnated 
grouse) . 

He liked the Beach-pea (Lathyrus maritimus), 
cooked green, as well as the cultivated. He had 



104 CAPE COD 

seen it growing very abundantly in Newfound- 
land, where also the inhabitants ate them, but he 
had never been able to obtain any ripe for seed. 
We read, under the head of Chatham, that "in 
1555, during a time of great scarcity, the people 
about Orford, in Sussex (England) were pre- 
served from perishing by eating the seeds of this 
plant, which grew there in great abundance on 
the sea-coast. Cows, horses, sheep, and goats 
eat it." But the writer who quoted this could 
not learn that they had ever been used in Barn- 
stable County. 

He had been a voyager, then ? O, he had been 
about the world in his day. He once considered 
himself a pilot for all our coast; but now they 
had changed the names so he might be bothered. 

He gave us to taste what he called the Sum- 
mer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised, 
and frequently grafted from, but had never seen 
growing elsewhere, except once, — three trees 
on Newfoundland, or at the Bay of Chaleur, I 
forget which, as he was sailing by. He was sure 
that he could tell the tree at a distance. 

At length the fool, whom my companion called 
the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth, 
"Damn book-pedlers, — all the time talking 
about books. Better do something. Damn 'em. 
I'll shoot 'em. Got a doctor down here. Damn 
him, I'll get a gun and shoot him"; never once 
holding up his head. Whereat the old man stood 




Wellfieet 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 105 

up and said in a loud voice, as if he was accus- 
tomed to command, and this was not the first 
time he had been obHged to exert his authority 
there: "John, go sit down, mind your business, 
— we've heard you talk before, — precious 
little you'll do, — your bark is worse than your 
bite." But, without minding, John muttered the 
same gibberish over again, and then sat down at 
the table which the old folks had left. He ate all 
there was on it, and then turned to the apples, 
which his aged mother was paring, that she 
might give her guests some apple-sauce for break- 
fast, but she drew them away and sent him off. 

When I approached this house the next sum- 
mer, over the desolate hills between it and the 
shore, which are worthy to have been the birth- 
place of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst 
of a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he 
loomed so strangely, that I mistook him for a 
scarecrow. 

This was the merriest old man that we had 
ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His 
style of conversation was coarse and plain 
enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have 
made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober 
Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and 
Mnasilus, who listened to his story. 

"Not by Hsemonian hills the Thracian bard. 
Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard 
With deeper silence or with more regard." 



106 CAPE COD 

There was a strange mingling of past and 
present in his conversation, for he had Hved 
under King George, and might have remem- 
bered when Napoleon and the moderns gener- 
ally were born. He said that one day, when the 
troubles between the Colonies and the mother 
country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, 
was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an 
old Tory, who was talking with his father, a 
good Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, you 
might as well undertake to pitch that pond into 
the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Colonies 
to undertake to gain their independence." He 
remembered well General Washington, and how 
he rode his horse along the streets of Boston, 
and he stood up to show us how he looked. 

"He was a r — a — ther large and portly-looking 
man, a manly and resolute-looking officer, with 
a pretty good leg as he sat on his horse." — 
"There, I'll tell you, this was the way with 
Washington." Then he jumped up again, and 
bowed gracefully to right and left, making show 
as if he were waving his hat. Said he, ^' That 
was Washington." 

He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, 
and was much pleased when we told him that 
we had read the same in history, and that his 
account agreed with the written. 

"O," he said, "I know, I know! I was a 
young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open ; 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 107 

and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide 
awake, and likes to know everything that's going 
on. O, I know !" 

He told us the story of the wreck of the Frank- 
lin, which took place there the previous spring: 
how a boy came to his house early in the morning 
to know whose boat that was by the shore, for 
there was a vessel in distress, and he, being an 
old man, first ate his breakfast, and then walked 
over to the top of the hill by the shore, and sat 
down there, having found a comfortable seat, 
to see the ship wrecked. She was on the bar, 
only a quarter of a mile from him, and still 
nearer to the men on the beach, who had got a 
boat ready, but could render no assistance on 
account of the breakers, for there was a pretty 
high sea running. There were the passengers 
all crowded together in the forward part of the 
ship, and some were getting out of the cabin 
windows and were drawn on deck by the others. 

"I saw the captain get out his boat," said he; 
"he had one little one; and then they jumped 
into it one after another, down as straight as an 
arrow. I counted them. There were nine. 
One was a woman, and she jumped as straight 
as any of them. Then they shoved off. The 
sea took them back, one wave went over them, 
and when they came up there were six still cling- 
ing to the boat; I counted them. The next 
wave turned the boat bottom upward, and emp- 



108 CAPE COD 

tied them all out. None of them ever came 
ashore alive. There were the rest of them all 
crowded together on the forecastle, the other 
parts of the ship being under water. They had 
seen all that happened to the boat. At length a 
heavy sea separated the forecastle from the rest 
of the wreck, and set it inside of the worst 
breaker, and the boat was able to reach them, 
and it saved all that were left, but one woman." 

He also told us of the steamer Cambria's get- 
ting aground on his shore a few months before 
we were there, and of her English passengers 
who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said, 
thought the prospect from the high hill by the 
shore "the most delightsome they had ever seen," 
and also of the pranks which the ladies played 
with his scoop-net in the ponds. He spoke of 
these travellers with their purses full of guineas, 
just as our provincial fathers used to speak of 
British bloods in the time of King George the 
Third. 

Quid loquar? Why repeat what he told us ? 

"Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est, 
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris, 
Dulichias vexasse rates, et gurgite in alto 
Ah timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis ? " 

In the course of the evening I began to feel 
the potency of the clam which I had eaten, and 
I was obliged to confess to our host that I was 
no tougher than the cat he told of; but he an- 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 109 

swered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and he 
could tell me that it was all imagination. At 
any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, and I 
was made quite sick by it for a short time, while 
he laughed at my expense. I was pleased to 
read afterward, in Mourt's Relation of the land- 
ing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor, 
these words: "We found great muscles (the old 
editor says that they were undoubtedly sea- 
clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl ; but we 
could not eat them, for they made us all sick 
that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, . . . 
but they were soon well again." It brought me 
nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus reminded by a 
similar experience that I was so like them. 
Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation of 
their story, and I am prepared now to believe 
every word of Mourt's Relation. I was also 
pleased to find that man and the clam lay still 
at the same angle to one another. But I did not 
notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have 
swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a 
flat in the Bay and observed them. They could 
squirt full ten feet before the wind, as appeared 
by the marks of the drops on the sand. 

"Now I'm going to ask you a question," said 
the old man, "and I don't know as you can tell 
me ; but you are a learned man, and I never had 
any learning, only what I got by natur." — It 
was in vain that we reminded him that he could 



110 CAPE COD 

quote Josephus to our confusion. — "I've 
thought, if I ever met a learned man I should 
like to ask him this question. Can you tell me 
how Axy is spelt, and what it means ? Axy,'' 
says he ; "there's a girl over here is named Axy. 
Now what is it ? What does it mean ? Is it 
Scripture ? I 've read my Bible twenty-five years 
over and over, and I never came across it." 

"Did you read it twenty -five years for this 
object.''" I asked. 

"Well, how is it spelt ? Wife, how is it spelt ? " 
. She said : "It is in the Bible ; I've seen it." 

"Well, how do you spell it.?" 

"I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh, — 
Achseh." 

"Does that spell Axy .? Well, do you know^ 
what it means.?" asked he, turning to me. 

"No," I replied, "I never heard the sound 
before." 

"There was a schoolmaster down here once, 
and they asked him what it meant, and he said 
it had no more meaning than a bean-pole." 

I told him that I held the same opinion with 
the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster 
myself, and had had strange names to deal with. 
I also heard of such names as Zolieth, Beriah, 
Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts. 

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite 
in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and 
shoes, warmed his feet, and having had his sore 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 111 

leg freshly salved, went off to bed ; then the fool 
made bare his knotty-looking feet and legs, and 
followed him ; and finally the old man exposed 
his calves also to our gaze. We had never had 
the good fortune to see an old man's legs before, 
and were surprised to find them fair and plump 
as an infant's, and we thought that he took a 
pride in exhibiting them. He then proceeded to 
make preparations for retiring, discoursing mean- 
while with Panurgic plainness of speech on the 
ills to which old humanity is subject. We were 
a rare haul for him. He could commonly get 
none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes 
ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet 
some of the laity at leisure. The evening was 
not long enough for him. As I had been sick, 
the old lady asked if I would not go to bed, — 
it was getting late for old people; but the old 
man, who had not yet done his stories, said, 
"You ain't particular, are you.?" 

"O, no," said I, "I am in no hurry. I believe 
I have weathered the Clam cape." 

"They are good," said he; "I wish I had 
some of them now." 

"They never hurt me," said the old lady. 

"But then you took out the part that killed a 
cat," said I. 

At last we cut him short in the midst of his 
stories, which he promised to resume in the 
morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies 



112 CAPE COD 

who came into our room in the night to fasten 
the fire-board, which rattled, as she went out 
took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women 
are by nature more suspicious than old men. 
However, the winds howled around the house, 
and made the fire-boards as well as the casements 
rattle well that night. It was probably a windy 
night for any locality, but we could not distin- 
guish the roar which was proper to the ocean 
from that which was due to the wind alone. 

The sounds which the ocean makes must be 
very significant and interesting to those who live 
near it. When I was leaving the shore at this 
place the next summer, and had got a quarter 
of a mile distant, ascending a hill, I was startled 
by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a 
large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, 
so that I caught my breath and felt my blood 
run cold for an instant, and I turned about, ex- 
pecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus 
far out of her course, but there was nothing un- 
usual to be seen. There was a low bank at the 
entrance of the Hollow, between me and the 
ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen 
into another stratum of air in ascending the hill, 
— which had wafted to me only the ordinary roar 
of the sea, — I immediately descended again, 
to see if I lost hearing of it ; but, without regard 
to my ascending or descending, it died away in a 
minute or two, and yet there was scarcely any 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 113 

wind all the while. The old man said that this 
was what they called the "rut," a peculiar roar 
of the sea before the wind changes, which, how- 
ever, he could not account for. He thought that 
he could tell all about the weather from the 
sounds which the sea made. 

Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 
1638, has it among his weather-signs, that "the 
resounding of the sea from the shore, and mur- 
muring of the winds in the woods, without ap- 
parent wind, sheweth wind to follow." 

Being on another part of the coast one night 
since this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile 
distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign 
that the wind would work round east, and we 
should have rainy weather. The ocean was 
heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this 
roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its 
equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before 
the wind. Also the captain of a packet between 
this country and England told me that he some- 
times met with a wave on the Atlantic coming 
against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which 
indicated that at a distance the wind was blowino; 
from an opposite quarter, but the undulation 
had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of "tide- 
rips" and "ground-swells," which they suppose 
to have been occasioned by hurricanes and earth- 
quakes, and to have travelled many hundred, 
and sometimes even two or three thousand miles. 

8 



114 CAPE COD 

Before sunrise the next morning they let us out 
again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun 
come out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty- 
four winters was already out in the cold morning 
wind, bareheaded, tripping about like a young 
girl, and driving up the cow to milk. She got 
the breakfast with despatch, and without noise 
or bustle; and meanwhile the old man resumed 
his stories, standing before us, who were sitting, 
with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his 
tobacco juice right and left into the fire behind 
him, without regard to the various dishes which 
were there preparing. At breakfast we had eels, 
buttermilk cake, cold bread, green beans, dough- 
nuts, and tea. The old man talked a steady 
stream; and when his wife told him he had 
better eat his breakfast, he said: "Don't hurry 
me; I have lived too long to be hurried." I ate 
of the apple-sauce and the doughnuts, which I 
thought had sustained the least detriment from 
the old man's shots, but my companion refused 
the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot cake and 
green beans, which had appeared to him to 
occupy the safest part of the hearth. But on 
comparing notes afterward, I told him that the 
buttermilk cake was particularly exposed, and 
I saw how it suffered repeatedly, and therefore 
I avoided it ; but he declared that, however that 
might be, he witnessed that the apple-sauce was 
seriously injured, and had therefore declined 




Hunting for a leak 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 115 

that. After breakfkst we looked at his clock, 
which was out of order, and oiled it with some 
"hen's grease," for want of sweet oil, for he 
scarcely could believe that we were not tinkers 
or pedlers; meanwhile he told a story about 
visions, which had reference to a crack in the 
clock-case made by frost one night. He was 
curious to know to what religious sect we be- 
longed. He said that he had been to hear thir- 
teen kinds of preaching in one month, when he 
was young, but he did not join any of them, — 
he stuck to his Bible. There was nothing like 
any of them in his Bible. While I was shaving 
in the next room, I heard him ask my com- 
panion to what sect he belonged, to which he 
answered : — 

"O, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood." 
"What's that.?" he asked, "Sons o' Tem- 
perance.'^" 

Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, 
which he was pleased to find that we called by 
the same name that he did, and paying for our 
entertainment, we took our departure; but he 
followed us out of doors, and made us tell him 
the names of the vegetables which he had raised 
from seeds that came out of the Franklin. They 
were cabbage, broccoli, and parsley. As I had 
asked him the names of so many things, he tried 
me in turn with all the plants which grew in his 
garden, both wild and cultivated. It was about 



116 CAPE COD 

half an acre, which he cultivated wholly himself. 
Besides the common garden vegetables, there 
were Yellow-Dock, Lemon Balm, Hyssop, Gill- 
go-over-the-ground. Mouse-ear, Chick-weed, 
Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other 
plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk 
stoop to pick a fish out of his pond. 

"There," said I, "he has got a fish." 

"Well," said the old man, who was looking all 
the while, but could see nothing, "he didn't 
dive, he just wet his claws." 

And, sure enough, he did not this time, though 
it is said that they often do, but he merely stooped 
low enough to pick him out with his talons ; but 
as he bore his shining prey over the bushes, it 
fell to the ground, and we did not see that he 
recovered it. That is not their practice. 

Thus, having had another crack with the old 
man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves, 
he directed us "athwart the fields," and we took 
to the beach again for another day, it being now 
late in the morning. 

It was but a day or two after this that the safe 
of the Provincetown Bank was broken open and 
robbed by two men from the interior, and we 
learned that our hospitable entertainers did at 
least transiently harbor the suspicion that we 
were the men. 



VI 

THE BEACH AGAIN 

OUR way to the high sand-bank, which I 
have described as extending all along the 
coast, led, as usual, through patches of 
Bay berry bushes which straggled into the sand. 
This, next to the Shrub-oak, was perhaps the 
most common shrub thereabouts. I was much 
attracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray 
berries which are clustered about the short twigs, 
just below the last year's growth. I know of but 
two bushes in Concord, and they, being stami- 
nate plants, do not bear fruit. The berries gave 
it a venerable appearance, and they smelled quite 
spicy, like small confectionery. Robert Beverley, 
in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705, 
states that "at the mouth of their rivers, and all 
along upon the sea and bay, and near many of 
their creeks and swamps, grows the myrtle, bear- 
ing a berry, of which they make a hard brittle 
wax, of a curious green color, which by refining 
becomes almost transparent. Of this they make 
candles, which are never greasy to the touch nor 
melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither 
does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like 
that of a tallow candle ; but, instead of being disa- 



118 CAPE COD 

greeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields 
a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room ; 
insomuch that nice people often put them out on 
purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff. 
The melting of these berries is said to have been 
first found out by a surgeon in New England, who 
performed wonderful things with a salve made of 
them." From the abundance of berries still 
hanging on the bushes, we judged that the inhabi- 
tants did not generally collect them for tallow, 
though we had seen a piece in the house we had 
.just left. I have since made some tallow myself. 
Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs in April, 
I rubbed them together between my hands and 
thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes, 
to which were added enough to make three pints, 
and I might have gathered them much faster 
with a suitable rake and a large shallow basket. 
They have little prominences like those of an 
orange all creased in tallow, which also fills the 
interstices down to the stone. The oily part rose 
to the top, making it look like a savory black 
broth, which smelled much like balm or other 
herb tea. You let it cool, then skim off the tallow 
from the surface, melt this again and strain it. 
I got about a quarter of a pound weight from my 
three pints, and more yet remained within the 
berries. A small portion cooled in the form of 
small flattish hemispheres, like crystallizations, 
the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them 



THE BEACH AGAIN 119 

as I picked them out from amid the berries), 
Loudon says, that "cultivated trees are said to 
yield more wax than those that are found wild." 
(See Duplessy, Vegetaux Resineux, Vol. II. p. 60.) 
If you get any pitch on your hands in the pine- 
woods you have only to rub some of these ber- 
ries between your hands to start it off. But 
the ocean was the grand fact there, which made 
us forget both bay berries and men. 

To-day the air was beautifully clear, and the 
sea no longer dark and stormy, though the waves 
still broke with foam along the beach, but spark- 
ling and full of life. Already that morning I had 
seen the day break over the sea as if it came out 
of its bosom : — 

"The safiFron-robed Dawn rose in haste from the streams 
Of Ocean, that she might bring light to immortals and to 
mortals." 

The sun rose visibly at such a distance over the 
sea that the cloud-bank in the horizon, which at 
first concealed him, was not perceptible until he 
had risen high behind it, and plainly broke and 
dispersed it, like an arrow. But as yet I looked 
at him as rising over land, and could not, without 
an effort, realize that he was rising over the sea. 
Already I saw some vessels on the horizon, which 
had rounded the Cape in the night, and were now 
well on their watery way to other lands. 

We struck the beach again in the south part of 



120 CAPE COD 

Truro. In the early part of the day, while it was 
flood tide and the beach was narrow and soft, 
we walked on the bank, which was very high 
here, but not so level as the day before, being 
more interrupted by slight hollows. The author 
of the Description of the Eastern Coast says of 
this part, that "the bank is very high and steep. 
From the edge of it west, there is a strip of sand 
a hundred yards in breadth. Then succeeds low 
brushwood, a quarter of a mile wide, and almost 
impassable. After which comes a thick, perplex- 
ing forest, in which not a house is to be discovered. 
Seamen, therefore, though the distance between 
these two hollows (Newcomb's and Brush Hol- 
lows) is great, must not attempt to enter the 
wood, as in a snowstorm they must undoubtedly 
perish." This is still a true description of the 
country, except that there is not much high wood 
left. 

There were many vessels, like gulls, skimming 
over the surface of the sea, now half concealed 
in its troughs, their dolphin-strikers ploughing 
the water, now tossed on the top of the billows. 
One, a bark standing down parallel with the 
coast, suddenly furled her sails, came to anchor, 
and swung round in the wind, near us, only half 
a mile from the shore. At first we thought that 
her captain wished to communicate with us, and 
perhaps we did not regard the signal of distress, 
which a mariner would have understood, and he 



THE BEACH AGAIN 121 

cursed us for cold-hearted wreckers who turned 
our backs on him. For hours we could still see 
her anchored there behind us, and we wondered 
how she could afford to loiter so long in her course. 
Or was she a smuggler who had chosen that wild 
beach to land her cargo on ? Or did they wish to 
catch fish, or paint their vessel ? Erelong other 
barks, and brigs, and schooners, which had in 
the mean while doubled the Cape, sailed by her 
in the smacking: breeze, and our consciences were 
relieved. Some of these vessels lagged behind, 
while others steadily went ahead. We narrowly 
watched their rig, and the cut of their jibs, and 
how they walked the water, for there was all the 
difference between them that there is between 
living creatures. But we wondered that they 
should be remembering Boston and New York 
and Liverpool, steering for them, out there; as 
if the sailor might forget his peddling business 
on such a grand highway. They had perchance 
brought orano:es from the Western Isles; and 
were they carrying back the peel ? We might as 
well transport our old traps across the ocean of 
eternity. Is that but another "trading-flood," 
with its blessed isles ? Is Heaven such a harbor 
as the Liverpool docks ? 

Still held on without a break, the inland bar- 
rens and shrubberv, the desert and the high sand- 
bank with its even slope, the broad white beach, 
the breakers, the green water on the bar, and the 



122 CAPE COD 

Atlantic Ocean; and we traversed with delight 
new reaches of the shore ; we took another lesson 
in sea-horses' manes and sea-cows' tails, in sea- 
jellies and sea-clams, with our new-gained expe- 
rience. The sea ran hardly less than the day 
before. It seemed with every wave to be sub- 
siding, because such was our expectation, and 
yet when hours had elapsed we could see no dif- 
ference. But there it was, balancing itself, the 
restless ocean by our side, lurching in its gait. 
Each wave left the sand all braided or woven, as 
it were, with a coarse woof and warp, and a dis- 
tinct raised edge to its rapid work. We made no 
haste, since we wished to see the ocean at our 
leisure ; and indeed that soft sand was no place in 
which to be in a hurry, for one mile there was as 
good as two elsewhere. Besides, we were obliged 
frequently to empty our shoes of the sand which 
one took in in climbing or descending the bank. 

As we were walking close to the water's edge 
this morning we turned round, by chance, and 
saw a large black object which the waves had 
just cast up on the beach behind us, yet too far 
off for us to distinguish what it was ; and when 
we were about to return to it, two men came 
running from the bank, where no human beings 
had appeared before, as if they had come out of 
the sand, in order to save it before another wave 
took it. As we approached, it took successively 
the form of a huge fish, a drowned man, a sail or 



THE BEACH AGAIN 123 

a net, and finally of a mass of tow-cloth, part of 
the cargo of the Franklin, which the men loaded 
into a cart. 

Objects on the beach, whether men or inani- 
mate things, look not only exceedingly grotesque, 
but much larger and more wonderful than they 
actually are. Lately, when approaching the sea- 
shore several degrees south of this, I saw before 
me, seemingly half a mile distant, what appeared 
like bold and rugged cliffs on the beach, fifteen 
feet high, and whitened by the sun and waves ; 
but after a few steps it proved to be low heaps of 
rags, — part of the cargo of a wrecked vessel, — 
scarcely more than a foot in height. Once also 
it was my business to go in search of the relics of 
a human body, mangled by sharks, which had just 
been cast up, a week after a wreck, having got the 
direction from a light-house: I should find it a 
mile or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods 
from the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick 
stuck up. I expected that I must look very nar- 
rowly to find so small an object, but the sandy 
beach, half a mile wide, and stretching farther 
than the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth 
and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so mag- 
nifying, that when I was half a mile distant the 
insignificant sliver which marked the spot looked 
like a bleached spar, and the relics were as con- 
spicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy 
plain, or a generation had labored to pile up their 



124 CAPE COD 

cairn there. Close at hand they were simply 
some bones with a little flesh adhering to them, 
in fact, only a slight inequality in the sweep of 
the shore. There was nothing at all remarkable 
about them, and they were singularly inoffensive 
both to the senses and the imagination. But as I 
stood there they grew more and more imposing. 
They were alone with the beach and the sea, 
whose hollow roar seemed addressed to them, 
and I was impressed as if there was an under- 
standincr between them and the ocean which 
necessarily left me out, with my snivelling sym- 
pathies. That dead body had taken possession of 
the shore, and reigned over it as no living one, 
could, in the name of a certain majesty which 
belonged to it. 

We afterward saw many small pieces of tow- 
cloth washed up, and I learn that it continued 
to be found in good condition, even as late as 
November in that year, half a dozen bolts at a 
time. 

We eagerly filled our pockets with the smooth 
round pebbles which in some places, even here, 
were thinly sprinkled over the sand, together with 
flat circular shells {Scutelloe?) ; but, as we had 
read, when they were dry they had lost their 
beauty, and at each sitting we emptied our pock- 
ets again of the least remarkable, until our col- 
lection was well culled. Every material was 
rolled into the pebble form by. the waves; not 



THE BEACH AGAIN 125 

only stones of various kinds, but the hard coal 
which some vessel had dropped, bits of glass, 
and in one instance a mass of peat three feet long, 
where there was nothing like it to be seen for 
many miles. All the great rivers of the globe are 
annually, if not constantly, discharging great 
quantities of lumber, which drifts to distant 
shores. I have also seen very perfect pebbles of 
brick, and bars of Castile soap from a wreck 
rolled into perfect cylinders, and still spirally 
streaked with red, like a barber's pole. When a 
cargo of rags is washed ashore, every old pocket 
and bag-like recess will be filled to bursting with 
sand by being rolled on the beach; and on one 
occasion, the pockets in the clothing of the wrecked 
being thus puffed up, even after they had been 
ripped open by wreckers, deluded me into the 
hope of identifying them by the contents. A pair 
of gloves looked exactly as if filled by a hand. 
The water in such clothing is soon wrung out and 
evaporated, but the sand, which works itself into 
every seam, is not so easily got rid of. Sponges, 
which are picked up on the shore, as is well 
known, retain some of the sand of the beach to 
the latest day, in spite of every effort to extract 
it. 

I found one stone on the top of the bank, of a 
dark gray color, shaped exactly like a giant clam 
(Mactra solidissima) , and of the same size ; and, 
what was more remarkable, one-half of the out- 



156 CAPE COD 

side had shelled off and hiy near it, of the same 
form and depth with one of the valves of this 
clam, while the other half was loose, leaving a 
solid core of a darker color within it. I after- 
ward saw a stone resemblinor a razor clam, but 
it was a solid one. It appeared as if tlie stone, in 
the process of formation, had tilled the mould 
which a clam-shell furnished ; or the same law 
that shaped the clam had made a clam of stone. 
Dead clams, with shells full of sand, are called 
sand clams. There were manv of the laro^e clam- 
shells tilled with sand ; and sometimes one valve 
was separately filled exactly even, as if it had 
been heaped and then scraped. Even, among 
the many small stones on the top of the bank, I 
found one arrow-head. 

Beside the ijiant clam and barnacles, we found 
on the shore a small clam {Mcsodcsma arciata), 
which I duo: with mv hands in numbers on the 
bars, and which is sometimes eaten bv the inliabi- 
tants, in the absence of the Mi/a arcuaria, on this 
side. Most of their empty shells had been per- 
forated bv some foe. — Also, the 

Astartc casfanea. 

The Edible Mussel (Mj/tilus edidis) on the few 
rocks, and washed up in curious bunches of forty 
or fifty, held together by its rope-like bijssus. 

The Scollop Shell {Pcctcn concent ricu^), used 
for card-racks and pin-cushions. 

Cockles, or Cuckoos {Xatica heros), and their 



THE BEACH AGAIN 127 

remarkable nidus, called ''sand-circle," looking 
like the top of a stone jug without the stopple, 
and broken on one side, or like a flaring dickey 
made of sand-paper. x\lso, 

Canccllaria CoutJiouyi (?), and 

Periwinkles (?) {Fiisus dcccmcostatus). 

We afterward saw some other kinds on the 
Bay-side. Gould states that this Cape "has 
hitlierto proved a barrier to the migrations of 
many species of MoUusca." — "Of the one hun- 
dred and ninety-seven species [which he described 
in 1840 as belonging to Massachusetts], eighty- 
three do not pass to the South shore, and fifty 
are not found on the North shore of the Cape." 

Among Crustacea, there were the shells of 
Crabs and Lobsters, often bleached quite white 
high up the beach; Sea or Beach Fleas {Amphi- 
poda) ; and the cases of the Horse-shoe Crab, or 
Saucepan Fish (Limulus PoIi/ph(Tmus), of which 
we saw many alive on the Bay side, where they 
feed pigs on them. Their tails were used as 
arrow-heads bv the Indians. 

Of Radiata, there were the Sea Chestnut or 
Egg {Echinus granulaius), commonly divested of 
its spines; flat circular shells {Scutella parma?) 
covered with chocolate-colored spines, but be- 
coming smooth and white, with five petal-like 
figures; a few Star-fishes or Five-fingers (As- 
tcrias ruben^) ; and Sun-fishes or Sea-jellies 
(Aurelioe). 



128 CAPE COD 

There was also at least one species of Sponge. 

The plants which I noticed here and there on 
the pure sandy shelf, between the ordinary high- 
water mark and the foot of the bank, were Sea 
Rocket {Cakile Americana), Saltwort {Salsola 
kali). Sea Sandwort {Honkenya pcploides). Sea 
Burdock (Xanthium cchinatum). Sea-side Spurge 
{Euphorbia pobjgonifolia) ; also. Beach Grass 
{Arundo, Psainma, or Calamagrosiis arcnaria). 
Sea-side Golden-rod {Solidago sempervirens)^ 
and the Beach Pea {LatJii/rus maritimus). 

Sometimes we helped a wrecker turn over a 
larger log than usual, or we amused ourselves 
with rolling stones down the bank, but we rarelv 
could make one reach the water, the beach was 
so soft and wide ; or we bathed in some shallow 
within a bar, where the sea covered us with sand 
at every flux, though it was quite cold and windy. 
The ocean there is commonlv but a tantalizino: 
prospect in hot weather, for with all that water 
before you, there is, as we were afterward told, 
no bathing on the Atlantic side, on account of the 
undertow and the rumor of sharks. At the light- 
house both in Eastham and Truro, the only 
houses quite on the shore, they declared, the next 
year, that they would not bathe there "for any 
sum," for they sometimes saw the sharks tossed 
up and quiver for a moment on the sand. Others 
laughed at these stories, but perhaps they could 
afford to because they never bathed anywhere. 



THE BEACH AGAIN 129 

One old wrecker told us that he killed a regular 
man-eating shark fourteen feet long, and hauled 
him out with his oxen, where we had bathed; 
and another, that his father caught a smaller one 
of the same kind that was stranded there, by 
standing him up on his snout so that the waves 
could not take him. They will tell you tough sto- 
ries of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not 
presume to doubt utterly, — how they will some- 
times upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at 
the man in it. I can easily believe in the under- 
tow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a 
dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation 
of a beach a hundred miles long. I should add, 
however, that in July we walked on the bank 
here a quarter of a mile parallel with a fish about 
six feet in length, possibly a shark, which was 
prowling slowly along within two rods of the 
shore. It was of a pale brown color, singularly 
film-like and indistinct in the water, as if all na- 
ture abetted this child of ocean, and showed 
many darker transverse bars or rings whenever 
it came to the surface. It is well known that dif- 
ferent fishes even of the same species are colored 
by the water they inhabit. We saw it go into a 
little cove or bathing-tub, where we had just been 
bathing, where the water was only four or five 
feet deep at that time, and after exploring it go 
slowly out again; but we continued to bathe 
there, only observing first from the bank if the 



130 CAPE COD 

cove was preoccupied. We thought that the 
water was fuller of life, more aerated perhaps 
than that of the Bay, like soda-water, for we 
were as particular as young salmon, and the ex- 
pectation of encountering a shark did not sub- 
tract an\'thin£r from its life-o;ivino; qualities. 

Sometimes we sat on the wet beach and 
watched the beach birds, sand-pipers, and others, 
trotting along close to each wave, and waiting for 
the sea to cast up their breakfast. The former 
{Charadrius melodus) ran with great rapidity and 
then stood stock still remarkably erect and 
hardlv to be distino:uished from the beach. The 
wet sand was covered with small skipping Sea 
Fleas, which apparently make a part of their 
food. These last are the little scavengers of the 
beach, and are so numerous that they will devour 
large fishes, which have been cast up, in a very 
short time. One little bird not larcrer than a 
sparrow, — it may have been a Phalarope. — 
would alight on the turbulent surface where the 
breakers were five or six feet hijjli, and float buov- 
antlv there like a duck, cunninoflv takiuir to its 
wincrs and liftinor itself a few feet throuijh the air 
over the foaming crest of each breaker, but some- 
times outridino; safelv a considerable billow which 
hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that 
it would not break. It was a little creature thus 
to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a 
success in its way as the breakers in theirs. There 



THE BEACH AGAIN 131 

was also an almost uninterrupted line of coots 
risinor and fallino; with the waves, a few rods from 
the shore, the whole length of the Cape. They 
made as constant a part of the ocean's border as 
the pads or pickerel-weed do of that of a pond. 
We read the following as to the Storm Petrel 
{Thalassidroma Wihofiii), which is seen in the 
Bay as well as on the outside. "The feathers on 
the breast of the Storm Petrel are, like those of 
all swimming birds, water-proof; but substances 
not susceptible of being wetted with water are, 
for that very reason, the best fitted for collectinor 
oil from its surface. That function is performed 
by the feathers on the breast of the Storm Petrels 
as they touch on the surface; and though that 
may not be the only way in which they procure 
their food, it is certainly that in which they ob- 
tain great part of it. They dash along till they 
have loaded their feathers and then they pause 
upon the wave and remove the oil with their 
bills." 

Thus we kept on along the gently curving 
shore, seeing two or three miles ahead at once, — 
along this ocean side-walk, where there was none 
to turn out for, with the middle of the road the 
hio-hwav of nations on our rio^ht. and the sand 
clilfs of the Cape on our left. We saw this fore- 
noon a part of the wreck of a vessel, probably the 
Franklin, a large piece fifteen feet square, and 
still freshly painted. With a grapple and a line 



132 CAPE COD 

we could have saved it, for the waves repeatedly 
washed it within cast, but they as often took it 
back. It would have been a lucky haul for some 
poor wrecker, for I have been told that one man 
who paid three or four dollars for a part of the 
wreck of that vessel, sold fifty or sixty dollars' 
worth of iron out of it. Another, the same who 
picked up the Captain's valise with the memo- 
rable letter in it, showed me, growing in his gar- 
den, many pear and plum trees which washed 
ashore from her, all nicely tied up and labelled, 
and he said that he might have got five hundred 
dollars' worth ; for a Mr. Bell was importing the 
nucleus of a nursery to be established near 
Boston. His turnip-seed came from the same 
source. Also valuable spars from the same 
vessel and from the Cactus lay in his yard. In 
short the inhabitants visit the beach to see what 
they have caught as regularly as a fisherman his 
weir or a lumberer his boom ; the Cape is their 
boom. I heard of one who had recently picked 
up twenty barrels of apples in good condition, 
probably a part of a deck load thrown over in a 
storm. 

Though there are wreck-masters appointed to 
look after valuable property which must be ad- 
vertised, yet undoubtedly a great deal of value is 
secretly carried off. But are we not all wreckers 
contriving that some treasure may be washed up 
on our beach, that we may secure it, and do we 



THE BEACH AGAIN 133 

not infer the habits of these Nauset and Barnegat 
wreckers from the common modes of getting a 
living ? 

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the 
waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest 
shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit 
up. It lets nothing lie ; not even the giant clams 
which cling to its bottom. It is still heaving up 
the tow-cloth of the Franklin, and perhaps a 
piece of some old pirate's ship, wrecked more 
than a hundred years ago, comes ashore to-day. 
Some years since, when a vessel was wrecked 
here which had nutmegs in her cargo, they were 
strewn all along the beach, and for a considera- 
ble time were not spoiled by the salt water. Soon 
afterward, a fisherman caught a cod which was 
full of them. Why, then, might not the Spice- 
Islanders shake their nutmeg trees into the ocean, 
and let all nations who stand in need of them pick 
them up ? However, after a year, I found that 
the nutmegs from the Franklin had become soft. 

You might make a curious list of articles which 
fishes have swallowed, — sailors' open clasp- 
knives, and bright tin snuff-boxes, not knowing 
what was in them, — and jugs, and jewels, and 
Jonah. The other day I came across the follow- 
ing scrap in a newspaper. 

" A Religious Fish. — A short time ago, mine host 
Stewart, of the Denton Hotel, purchased a rock-fish, 
weighing about sixty pounds. On opening it he found 



134 CAPE COD 

in it a certificate of membership of the M. E. Church, 

which we read as follows : — 

Member 
Methodist E. Church. 
Founded A. D. 1784. 
Quarterly Ticket. IS 

Minister. 

'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' — "i Cor. 
iv. 17. 

' O what are all my sufferings here. 
If. Lord, thou count me meet 
With that enraptured host t' appear. 
And worship at thy feet ! ' 

'* The paper was of course in a crumpled and wet 
condition, but on exposing it to the sun. and ironing the 
kinks out of it. it became quite legible. — Dcntcm {Md.) 
Journal." 

From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves, 
a box or barrel, and set it on its end, and appro- 
priated it with crossed sticks; and it will lie 
there perhaps, respected bv brother wreckers, 
until some more violent storm shall take it, reallv 
lost to man until wrecked again. We also saved, 
at the cost of wet feet only, a valuable cord and 
buoy, part of a seine, with which the sea was 
playing, for it seemed ungracious to refuse the 
least gift which so great a personage ottered you. 
We brought this home and still use it for a crarden 
line. I picked up a bottle half buried in the wet 
sand, covered with barnacles, but stoppled tight, 



THE BEACH AGAIN 135 

and half fiill of red ale, which still smacked of 
juniper, — all that remained I fancied from the 
wreck of a rowdy world, — that great salt sea on 
the one hand, and this little sea of ale on the 
other, preserving their separate characters. Wliat 
if it could tell us its adventures over countless 
ocean waves ! Man would not be man through 
such ordeals as it had passed. But as I poured 
it slowlv out on to the sand, it seemed to me that 
man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of 
pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stop- 
pled tight for a while, and drifting about in the 
ocean of circumstances ; but destined erelong 
to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be 
spilled amid the sands of a distant shore. 

In the summer I saw two men fishing for Bass 
hereabouts. Their bait was a bullfrog, or several 
small frogs in a bunch, for want of squid. They 
followed a retiring wave and whirling their lines 
round and round their heads with increasing 
rapidity, threw them as far as they could into the 
sea ; then retreating, sat down, flat on the sand, 
and waited for a bite. It was literally (or lit- 
torallij) walking down to the shore, and throwing 
vour line into the Atlantic. I should not have 
known what might take hold of the other end, 
whether Proteus or another. At any rate, if you 
could not pull him in, why, you might let him go 
without being pulled in yourself. And they knew 
by experience that it would be a Striped Bass, or 



136 CAPE COD 

perhaps a Cod, for these fishes play along near 
the shore. 

From time to time we sat under the lee of a 
sand-hill on the bank, thinly covered with coarse 
Beach-grass, and steadily gazed on the sea, or 
watched the vessels going south, all Blessings of 
the Bay of course. We could see a little more 
than half a circle of ocean, besides the glimpses of 
the Bay which we got behind us; the sea there 
was not wild and dreary in all respects, for there 
were frequently a hundred sail in sight at once on 
the Atlantic. You can commonly count about 
eighty in a favorable summer day and pilots 
sometimes land and ascend the bank to look out 
for these which require their services. These 
had been waiting for fair weather, and had come 
out of Boston Harbor together. The same is 
the case when they have been assembled in the 
Vineyard Sound, so that you may see but few one 
day, and a large fleet the next. Schooners with 
many jibs and stay-sails crowded all the sea 
road; square-rigged vessels with their great 
height and breadth of canvas were ever and anon 
appearing out of the far horizon, or disappearing 
and sinking into it; here and there a pilot-boat 
was towing its little boat astern toward some 
distant foreigner who had just fired a gun, the 
echo of which along the shore sounded like the 
caving of the bank. We could see the pilot look- 
ing through his glass toward the distant ship 



W 




.«^«^'^. 



Unloaditig the day' s catch 



THE BEACH AGAIN 137 

which was putting back to speak with him. He 
sails many a mile to meet her ; and now she puts 
her sails aback, and communicates with him 
alongside, — sends some important message to 
the owners, and then bids farewell to these 
shores for good and all ; or, perchance a pro- 
peller passed and made fast to some disabled 
craft, or one that had been becalmed, whose 
cargo of fruit might spoil. Though silently, and 
for the most part incommunicatively, going about 
their business, they were, no doubt, a source of 
cheerfulness and a kind of society to one another. 
To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which 
I should not before have accepted. There were 
distinct patches of the color of a purple grape 
with the bloom rubbed off. But first and last the 
sea is of all colors. Well writes Gilpin concern- 
ing "the brilliant hues which are continually 
playing on the surface of a quiet ocean," and this 
was not too turbulent at a distance from the 
shore. "Beautiful," says he, "no doubt in a high 
degree are those glimmering tints which often 
invest the tops of mountains ; but they are mere 
coruscations compared with these marine colors, 
which are continually varying and shifting into 
each other in all the vivid splendor of the rain- 
bow, through the space often of several leagues." 
Commonly, in calm weather, for half a mile from 
the shore, where the bottom tinges it, the sea is 
green, or greenish, as are some ponds ; then blue 



138 CAPE COD 

for many miles, often with purple tinges, bounded 
in the distance by a light almost silvery stripe; 
beyond which there is generally a dark-blue rim, 
like a mountain-ridge in the horizon, as if, like 
that, it owed its color to the intervening atmos- 
phere. On another day it will be marked with 
long streaks, alternately smooth and rippled, 
light-colored and dark, even like our inland 
meadows in a freshet, and showing which way 
the wind sets. 

Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on 
the wine-colored ocean, — 

©tV C<^' dXoS TToXt^S, OpOWV CTTl o'vOTTa TTOVTOV. 

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface, 
the shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so 
clear that no cloud would have been noticed 
otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen 
on the land, where a much smaller surface is 
visible at once. So, distant clouds and showers 
may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course 
of a day, which do not necessarily portend rain 
where he is. In July we saw similar dark-blue 
patches where schools of Menhaden rippled the 
surface, scarcely to be distinguished from the 
shadows of clouds. Sometimes the sea was 
spotted with them far and wide, such is its inex- 
haustible fertility. Close at hand you see their 
back fin, which is very long and sharp, projecting 
two or three inches above water. From time to 



THE BEACH AGAIN 139 

time also we saw the white bellies of the Bass 
playing along the shore. 

It was a poetic recreation to watch those dis- 
tant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose 
very names are a mysterious music to our ears: 
Fayal, and Babelmandel, ay, and Chagres, and 
Panama, — bound to the famous Bay of San 
Francisco, and the golden streams of Sacramento 
and San Joaquin, to Feather River and the 
American Fork, where Sutter's Fort presides, 
and inland stands the City de los Angeles. It is 
remarkable that men do not sail the sea with 
more expectation. Nothing remarkable was 
ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The 
heroes and discoverers have found true more 
than was previously believed, only when they 
were expecting and dreaming of something more 
than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even 
themselves discovered, that is, when they were in 
a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Re- 
ferred to the world's standard, they are always 
insane. Even savages have indirectly surmised 
as much. Humboldt, speaking of Columbus 
approaching the New World, says: "The grate- 
ful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity 
of the starry firmament, the balmy fragrance of 
flowers, wafted to him by the land breeze, all led 
him to suppose (as we are told by Herrara, in the 
Decades) that he was approaching the garden of 
Eden, the sacred abode of our first parents. The 



140 CAPE COD 

Orinoco seemed to him one of the four rivers 
which, according to the venerable tradition of 
the ancient world, flowed from Paradise, to water 
and divide the surface of the earth, newly adorned 
with plants." So even the expeditions for the 
discovery of El Dorado, and of the Fountain 
of Youth, led to real, if not compensatory 
discoveries. 

We discerned vessels so far off, when once we 
began to look, that only the tops of their masts in 
the horizon were visible, and it took a strong in- 
tention of the eye, and its most favorable side, to 
see them at all, and sometimes we doubted if we 
were not counting our eyelashes. Charles Dar- 
win states that he saw, from the base of the 
Andes, "the masts of the vessels at anchor in the 
bay of Valparaiso, although not less than twenty- 
six geographical miles distant," and that Anson 
had been surprised at the distance at which his 
vessels were discovered from the coast, without 
knowing the reason, namely, the great height of 
the land and the transparency of the air. Steam- 
ers may be detected much farther than sailing 
vessels, for, as one says, when their hulls and 
masts of wood and iron are down, their smoky 
masts and streamers still betray them; and the 
same writer, speaking of the comparative ad- 
vantages of bituminous and anthracite coal for 
war-steamers, states that, "from the ascent of 
the columns of smoke above the horizon, the 



THE BEACH AGAIN 141 

motions of the steamers in Calais Harbor [on the 
coast of France] are at all times observable at 
Ramsgate [on the English coast], from the first 
lighting of the fires to the putting out at sea ; and 
that in America the steamers burning the fat 
bituminous coal can be tracked at sea at least 
seventy miles before the hulls become visible, 
by the dense columns of black smoke pouring 
out of their chimneys, and trailing along the 
horizon." 

Though there were numerous vessels at this 
great distance in the horizon on every side, yet 
the vast spaces between them, like the spaces 
between the stars, far as they were distant from 
us, so were they from one another, — nay, some 
were twice as far from each other as from us, — 
impressed us with a sense of the immensity of 
the ocean, the "unfruitful ocean," as it has been 
called, and we could see what proportion man 
and his works bear to the globe. As we looked 
off, and saw the water growing darker and 
darker and deeper and deeper the farther we 
looked, till it was awful to consider, and it ap- 
peared to have no relation to the friendly land, 
either as shore or bottom, — of what use is a bot- 
tom if it is out of sight, if it is two or three miles 
from the surface, and you are to be drowned so 
long before you get to it, though it were made of 
the same stuff with your native soil ? — over that 
ocean, where, as the Veda says, ' 'there is nothing 



142 CAPE COD 

to give support, nothing to rest upon, nothing to 
cling to," I felt that I was a land animal. The 
man in a balloon even may commonly alight on 
the earth in a few moments, but the sailor's only 
hope is that he may reach the distant shore. I 
could then appreciate the heroism of the old 
navigator. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, of whom it is 
related that, being overtaken by a storm when 
on his return from America, in the year 1583, 
far northeastward from where we were, sittino; 
abaft with a book in his hand, just before he was 
swallowed up in the deep, he cried out to his 
comrades in the Hind, as they came within hear- 
ing, "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by 
land." I saw that it would not be easy to realize. 
On Cape Cod, the next most eastern land you 
hear of is St. George's Bank (the fishermen tell 
of "Georges," "Cashus," and other sunken 
lands which they frequent). Every Cape man 
has a theory about George's Bank having been 
an island once, and in their accounts they gradu- 
ally reduce the shallowness from six, five, four, 
two fathoms, to somebody's confident assertion 
that he has seen a mackerel-gull sitting; on a 
piece of dry land there. It reminded me, when I 
thought of the shipwrecks which had taken place 
there, of the Isle of Demons, laid down off this 
coast in old charts of the New World. There 
must be something monstrous, methinks, in a 
vision of the sea bottom from over some bank a 



THE BEACH AGAIN 143 

thousand miles from the shore, more awful than 
its imagined bottomlessness ; a drowned conti- 
nent, all livid and frothing at the nostrils, like the 
body of a drowned man, which is better sunk 
deep than near the surface. 

I have been surprised to discover from a 
steamer the shallowness of Massachusetts Bay 
itself. Off Billingsgate Point I could have 
touched the bottom with a pole, and I plainly 
saw it variously shaded with sea- weed, at five or 
six miles from the shore. This is "The Shoal- 
ground of the Cape," it is true, but elsewhere the 
bay is not much deeper than a country pond. We 
are told that the deepest water in the English 
Channel between Shakespeare's Cliff and Cape 
Grinez, in France, is one hundred and eighty 
feet; and Guyot says that "the Baltic Sea has a 
depth of only one hundred and twenty feet be- 
tween the coasts of Germany and those of Swe- 
den," and "the Adriatic between Venice and 
Trieste has a depth of only one hundred and 
thirty feet." A pond in my native town, only 
half a mile long, is more than one hundred feet 
deep. 

The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer 
you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smooth- 
ness on it, a few rods in width and many miles 
long, as if the surface there were covered with a 
thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond ; a 
sort of stand-still, you would say, at the meeting 



144 CAPE COD 

or parting of two currents of air (if it does not 
rather mark the unrippled steadiness of a current 
of water beneath) , for sailors tell of the ocean and 
land breeze meeting between the fore and aft 
sails of a vessel, while the latter are full, the for- 
mer being suddenly taken aback. Daniel Web- 
ster, in one of his letters describing blue-fishing 
off Martha's Vineyard, referring to those smooth 
places, which fishermen and sailors call "slicks," 
says: "We met with them yesterday, and our 
boatman made for them, whenever discovered. 
He said they were caused by the blue-fish chop- 
ping up their prey. That is to say, those vora- 
cious fellows get into a school of menhaden, which 
are too large to swallow whole, and they bite 
them into pieces to suit their tastes. And the oil 
from this butchery, rising to the surface, makes 
the 'slick.'" 

Yet this same placid Ocean, as civil now as a 
city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, 
will erelong be lashed into sudden fury, and all 
its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It 
will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, 
break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, 
and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will 
play with them like sea- weed, distend them like 
dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now 
low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. 
This gentle Ocean will toss and tear the rag of a 
man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his 



THE BEACH AGAIN 145 

relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for 
weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland 
hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard- 
of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor 
has recently been buried amid the sandhills. 

It is generally supposed that they who have 
long been conversant with the Ocean can fore- 
tell by certain indications, such as its roar and 
the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from 
calm to storm ; but probably no such ancient 
mariner as we dream of exists; they know no 
more, at least, than the older sailors do about 
this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. 
Nevertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old 
sailors, and their accounts of natural phenomena, 
which totally ignore, and are ignored by, science ; 
and possibly they have not always looked over the 
gunwale so long in vain. Kalm repeats a story 
which was told him in Philadelphia by a Mr. 
Cock, who was one day sailing to the West In- 
dies in a small yacht, with an old man on board 
who was well acquainted with those seas. "The 
old man sounding the depth, called to the mate 
to tell Mr. Cock to launch the boats immediately, 
and to put a sufficient number of men into them, 
in order to tow the yacht during the calm, that 
they might reach the island before them as soon 
as possible, as within twenty-four hours there 
would be a strong hurricane. Mr. Cock asked 
him what reasons he had to think so; the old 

10 



146 CAPE COD 

man replied tliat. on sounding, he saw the lead 
in the water at a distance of manv fathoms more 
than he had seen it before; that therefore the 
water was become clear all of a sudden, which 
he looked upon as a certain sign of an impending 
hurricane in the sea."" The sequel of the storv 
is that, bv crood fortune and bv dint of rowinof. 
thev manaofed to f^ain a safe harbor before the 
hurricane had reached its heio-ht; but it iinallv 
rao;ed with so much violence that not onlv manv 
ships were lost and houses unroofed, but even 
their own vessel in harbor was washed so far on 
shore that several weeks elapsed before it could 
be got off. 

The Greeks would not have called the ocean 
aTpvy€To<;. or unfruitful, though it does not pro- 
duce wheat, if thev had viewed it bv the liirht of 
modern science ; for naturalists now assert that 
"the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat 
of life," — though not of vegetable life. Darwin 
affirms that "our most thicklv inhabited forests 
appear almost as deserts when we come to com- 
pare them with the corresponding regions of the 
ocean." Agassiz and Gould tell us that "the sea 
teems with animals of all classes, far bevond the 
extreme point of flowering plants"; but they 
add that "experiments of dredging in very deep 
water have also taught us that the abvss of the 
ocean is nearlv a desert"; — "so that modern 
investigations," to quote the words of Desor, 



THE BEACH AGAIN 147 

*' merely go to confirm the s^reat idea which was 
vaguely anticipated bv the ancient poets and 
philosophers, that the Ocean is the origin of all 
things." Yet marine animals and plants hold a 
lower rank in the scale of being than land animals 
and plants. "There is no instance known," says 
Desor, "of an animal becoming aquatic in its 
perfect state, after having lived in its lower stage 
on dry land." but as in the case of the tadpole, 
"the progress invariably points towards the dry 
land." In short, the drv land itself came throuirh 
and out of the water in its wav to the heavens, 
for, "in cjoino: back tlirouojh the cr^olosfical ages, 
we come to an epoch when, according to all ap- 
pearances, the dry land did not exist, and when 
the surface of our cjlobe was entirelv covered with 
water." We looked on the sea, then, once more, 
not as a7piryero9, or unfruitful, but as it has been 
more trulv called, the "laboratory of continents." 
Though we have indulged in some placid re- 
flections of late, the reader must not foro^et that 
the dash and roar of the waves were incessant. 
Indeed, it would be well if he were to read with a 
large conch-shell at his ear. But notwithstaud- 
inor that it was verv cold and windv to-dav, it 
was such a cold as we thouo:ht would not cause 
one to take cold who was exposed to it, owing to 
the saltness of the air and the drvness of the soil. 
Yet the author of the old Description of Wellfleet 
says: "The atmosphere is very much impreg- 



US CAPE COD 

nated with saline particles, which, perhaps, with 
the o:reat use of tisli, and the nei::lect of cider and 
spruce-beer, may be a reason why the people are 
more subject to sore mouths antl throats than in 
other places." 



VII 
ACROSS THE CAPE 

WHEN we have returned from the sea- 
side, we sometimes ask ourselves why 
we did not spend more time in gazing 
at the sea; but very soon the traveller does not 
look as the sea more than at the heavens. As for 
the interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst 
of the ocean can be said to have any interior, 
it was an exceedingly desolate landscape, with 
rarely a cultivated or cultivable field in sight. 
We saw no villages, and seldom a house, for 
these are generally on the Bay side. It was a 
succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now 
wearing an autumnal tint. You would frequently 
think, from the character of the surface, the 
dwarfish trees, and the bearberries around, that 
you were on the top of a mountain. The only 
wood in Eastham was on the edge of Wellfleet. 
The pitch-pines were not commonly more than 
fifteen or eighteen feet high. The larger ones 
covered with lichens, — often liuno; with the 
long gray Usnca. There is scarcely a white-pine 
on the forearm of the Cape. Yet in the north- 
west part of Eastham, near the Camp Ground, 
we saw, the next summer, some quite rural, and 



150 CAPE COD 

even sylvan retreats, for the Cape, where small 
rustling groves of oaks and locusts and whisper- 
ing pines, on perfectly level ground, made a little 
paradise. The locusts, both transplanted and 
growing naturally about the houses there, ap- 
peared to flourish better than any other tree. 
There were thin belts of wood in Wellfleet and 
Truro, a mile or more from the Atlantic, but. 
for the most part, we could see the horizon 
through them. or. if extensive, the trees were not 
large. Both oaks and pines had often the same 
.flat look with the apple-trees. Commonly, the 
oak woods twentv-tive vears old were a mere 
scra2:2:v shrubbery nine or ten feet hiirh. and we 
could frequently reach to their topmost leaf. 
Much that is called "woods" was about half as 
hio^h as this. — onlv patches of shrub-oak, bav- 
berr^". beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun with 
woodbine. Wlien the roses were in bloom, these 
patches in the midst of the sand displayed such 
a profusion of blossoms, mingled with the 
aroma of the bavberrv. that no Italian or other 
artificial rose-garden could equal them. They 
were perfectly Elysian, and realized my idea of 
an oasis in the desert. Iluckleberrv-bushes were 

ft 

ven' abundant, and the next summer tliev bore 

ft ft 

a remarkable quantity of that kind of gall called 
Huckleberiy-apple. forming quite handsome 
thouo-h monstrous blossoms. But it must be 
added, that this shrubberv swarmed with wood- 




./ 7) 



rur: 



:rT'iith 



ACROSS THE CAPE 151 

ticks, sometimes very troublesome parasites, and 
which it takes very horny fingers to crack. 

The inhabitants of these towns have a great 
regard for a tree, though their standard for one 
is necessarily neither large nor high; and when 
they tell you of the large trees that once grew 
here, you must think of them, not as absolutely 
large, but large compared with the present gen- 
eration. Their "brave old oaks," of which 
they speak with so much respect, and which 
they will point out to you as relics of the primi- 
tive forest, one hundred or one hundred and 
fifty, ay, for aught they know, two hundred years 
old, have a ridiculously dwarfish appearance, 
which excites a smile in the beholder. The 
largest and most venerable which they will show 
you in such a case are, perhaps, not more than 
twenty or twenty-five feet high. I was especially 
amused by the Liliputian old oaks in the south 
part of Truro. To the inexperienced eye, which 
appreciated their proportions only, they might 
appear vast as the tree which saved his royal 
majesty, but measured, they were dwarfed at 
once almost into lichens which a deer might eat 
up in a morning. Yet they will tell you that 
large schooners were once built of timber which 
grew in Wellfleet. The old houses also are built 
of the timber of the Cape; but instead of the 
forests in the midst of which they originally 
stood, barren heaths, with poverty-grass for 



152 CAPE COD 

heather, now stretch away on every side. The 
modern houses are built of what is called "di- 
mension timber," imported from Maine, all 
ready to be set up, so that commonly they do 
not touch it again with an axe. Almost all the 
wood used for fuel is imported by vessels or cur- 
rents, and of course all the coal. I was told that 
probably a quarter of the fuel and a considerable 
part of the lumber used in North Truro was 
drift-wood. Many get all their fuel from the 
beach. 

Of birds not found in the interior of the State, 
— at least in my neighborhood, — I heard, in 
the summer, the Black-throated Bunting (Friii- 
gilla Americana) amid the shrubbery, and in the 
open land the Upland Plover (Totanus Bar- 
tramius), whose quivering notes were ever and 
anon prolonged into a clear, somewhat plaintive, 
yet hawk-like scream, which sounded at a very 
indefinite distance. The bird may have been 
in the next field, though it sounded a mile off. 

To-day we were walking through Truro, a 
town of about eighteen hundred inhabitants. 
We had already come to Pamet River, which 
empties into the Bay. This was the limit of the 
Pilgrims' journey up the Cape from Province- 
town, when seeking a place for settlement. It 
rises in a hollow within a few rods of the Atlantic, 
and one who lives near its source told us that in 
high tides the sea leaked through, yet the wind 



ACROSS THE CAPE 153 

and waves preserve intact the barrier between 
them, and thus the whole river is steadily driven 
westward butt-end foremost, — fountain-head, 
channel, and light-house at the mouth, all 
together. 

Early in the afternoon we reached the High- 
land Light, whose white tower we had seen rising 
out of the bank in front of us for the last mile or 
two. It is fourteen miles from the Nauset Lights, 
on what is called the Clay Pounds, an immense 
bed of clay abutting on the Atlantic, and, as the 
keeper told us, stretching quite across the Cape, 
which is here only about two miles wide. We 
perceived at once a difference in the soil, for 
there was an interruption of the desert, and a 
slight appearance of a sod under our feet, such 
as we had not seen for the last two days. 

After arranging to lodge at the light-house, we 
rambled across the Cape to the Bay, over a sin- 
gularly bleak and barren-looking country, con- 
sisting of rounded hills and hollows, called by 
geologists diluvial elevations and depressions, — 
a kind of scenery which has been compared to a 
chopped sea, though this suggests too sudden a 
transition. There is a delineation of this very 
landscape in Hitchcock's Report on the Geology 
of Massachusetts, a work which, by its size at 
least, reminds one of a diluvial elevation itself. 
Looking southward from the light-house, the 
Cape appeared like an elevated plateau, sloping 



154 CAPE COD 

very regularly, though slightly, downward from 
the edge of the bank on the Atlantic side, about 
one hundred and fifty feet above the ocean, to 
that on the Bay side. On traversing this we 
found it to be interrupted by broad valleys or 
gullies, which become the hollows in the bank 
when the sea has worn up to them. They are 
commonly at right angles with the shore, and 
often extend quite across the Cape. Some of the 
valleys, however, are circular, a hundred feet 
deep without any outlet, as if the Cape had sunk 
in those places, or its sands had run out. The 
few scattered houses which we passed, being 
placed at the bottom of the hollows for shelter 
and fertility, were, for the most part, concealed 
entirely, as much as if they had been swallowed 
up in the earth. Even a village with its meeting- 
house, which we had left little more than a stone's 
throw behind, had sunk into the earth, spire and 
all, and we saw only the surface of the upland 
and the sea on either hand. When approaching 
it, we had mistaken the belfry for a summer- 
house on the plain. We began to think that we 
might tumble into a village before we were 
aware of it, as into an ant-lion's hole, and be 
drawn into the sand irrecoverably. The most 
conspicuous objects on the land were a distant 
windmill, or a meeting-house standing alone, for 
only they could afford to occupy an exposed 
place. A great part of the township, however, is 



ACROSS THE CAPE 155 

a barren, heath-like plain, and perhaps one 
third of it lies in common, though the property 
of individuals. The author of the old "Descrip- 
tion of Truro," speaking of the soil, says : "The 
snow, which would be of essential service to it 
provided it lay level and covered the ground, is 
blown into drifts and into the sea." This pe- 
culiar open country, with here and there a patch 
of shrubbery, extends as much as seven miles, or 
from Pamet River on the south to High Head on 
the north, and from Ocean to Bay. To walk 
over it makes on a stranger such an impression 
as being at sea, and he finds it impossible to 
estimate distances in any weather. A windmill 
or a herd of cows may seem to be far away in the 
horizon, yet, after going a few rods, he will be 
close upon them. He is also deluded by other 
kinds of mirage. When, in the summer, I saw a 
family a-blueberrying a mile off, walking about 
amid the dwarfish bushes which did not come up 
higher than their ankles, they seemed to me to 
be a race of giants, twenty feet high at least. 

The highest and sandiest portion next the 
Atlantic was thinly covered with Beach-grass 
and Indigo- weed. Next to this the surface of 
the upland generally consisted of white sand 
and gravel, like coarse salt, through which a 
scanty vegetation found its way up. It will give 
an ornithologist some idea of its barrenness if I 
mention that the next June, the month of grass. 



156 CAPE COD 

I found a night-hawk's eggs there, and that al- 
most any square rod thereabouts, taken at ran- 
dom, would be an eligible site for such a deposit. 
The kildeer- plover, which loves a similar locality, 
also drops its eggs there, and fills the air above 
with its din. This upland also produced Cla- 
donia lichens, poverty-grass, savory-leaved aster 
{Diplopappiis linariifolius), mouse-ear, bear- 
berry, &c. On a few hillsides the savory-leaved 
aster and mouse-ear alone made quite a dense 
sward, said to be very pretty when the aster is 
in bloom. In some parts the two species of 
poverty-grass {Hudsonia tomentosa and eri- 
coides), which deserve a better name, reign for 
miles in little hemispherical tufts or islets, like 
moss, scattered over the waste. They linger in 
bloom there tiH the middle of July. Occasionally 
near the beach these rounded beds, as also those 
of the sea-sandwort {Honkenya pcploides), were 
filled with sand within an inch of their tops, and 
were hard, like large ant-hills, while the sur- 
rounding sand was soft. In summer, if the 
poverty-grass grows at the head of a Hollow 
looking toward the sea, in a bleak position where 
the wind rushes up, the northern or exposed 
half of the tuft is sometimes all black and dead 
like an oven-broom, while the opposite half is 
yellow with blossoms, the whole hillside thus 
presenting a remarkable contrast when seen from 
the poverty-stricken and the flourishing side. 



ACROSS THE CAPE 157 

This plant, which in many places would be es- 
teemed an ornament, is here despised by many 
on account of its being associated with barren- 
ness. It might well be adopted for the Barn- 
stable coat-of-arms, in a field sahleux. I should 
be proud of it. Here and there were tracts of 
Beach-grass mingled with the Sea-side Golden- 
rod and Beach-pea, which reminded us still 
more forcibly of the ocean. 

We read that there was not a brook in Truro. 
Yet there were deer here once, which must often 
have panted in vain; but I am pretty sure that 
I afterward saw a small fresh-water brook emp- 
tying into the south side of Pamet River, though 
I was so heedless as not to taste it. At any rate, 
a little boy near by told me that he drank at it. 
There was not a tree as far as we could see, and 
that was many miles each way, the general level 
of the upland being about the same everywhere. 
Even from the Atlantic side we overlooked the 
Bay, and saw to Manomet Point in Plymouth, 
and better from that side because it was the 
highest. The almost universal bareness and 
smoothness of the landscape were as agreeable 
as novel, making it so much the more like the 
deck of a vessel. We saw vessels sailing south 
into the Bay, on the one hand, and north along 
the Atlantic shore, on the other, all with an aft 
wind. 

The single road which runs lengthwise the 



158 CAPE COD 

Cape, now winding over the plain, now through 
the shrubbery which scrapes the wheels of the 
stage, was a mere cart-track in the sand, com- 
monly without any fences to confine it, and con- 
tinually changing from this side to that, to harder 
ground, or sometimes to avoid the tide. But 
the inhabitants travel the waste here and there 
pilgrim-wise and staff in hand, by narrow foot- 
paths, through which the sand flows out and 
reveals the nakedness of the land. We shud- 
dered at the thought of living there and taking 
our afternoon walks over those barren swells, 
where we could overlook every step of our walk 
before taking it, and would have to pray for a. 
fog or a snow-storm to conceal our destiny. 
The walker there must soon eat his heart. 
In the north part of the town there is no house 
from shore to shore for several miles, and it is as 
wild and solitary as the Western Prairies — 
used to be. Indeed, one who has seen every 
house in Truro will be surprised to hear of the 
number of the inhabitants, but perhaps five 
hundred of the men and boys of this small town 
were then abroad on their fishing grounds. Only 
a few men stay at home to till. the sand or watch 
for blackfish. The farmers are fishermen- 
farmers and understand better ploughing the sea 
than the land. They do not disturb their sands 
much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed in the 
creeks, to say nothing of blackfish occasionally 



ACROSS THE CAPE 159 

rottlnoj on the shore. Between the Pond and 
East Harbor Village there was an interesting 
plantation of pitch-pines, twenty or thirty acres 
in extent, like those which we had already seen 
from the stage. One who lived near said that 
the land was purchased by two men for a shilling 
or twenty-five cents an acre. Some is not con- 
sidered worth writing a deed for. This soil or 
sand, which was partially covered with poverty 
and beach grass, sorrel, &c., was furrowed at 
intervals of about four feet and the seed dropped 
by a machine. The pines had come up ad- 
mirably and grown the first year three or four 
inches, and the second six inches and more. 
Where the seed had been lately planted the white 
sand was freshly exposed in an endless furrow 
winding round and round the sides of the deep 
hollows, in a vortical spiral manner, which pro- 
duced a very singular effect, as if you were look- 
ing into the reverse side of a vast banded shield. 
This experiment, so important to the Cape, 
appeared very successful, and perhaps the time 
will come when the greater part of this kind of 
land in Barnstable County will be thus covered 
with an artificial pine forest, as has been done 
in some parts of France. In that country 12,500 
acres of downs had been thus covered in 1811 
near Bayonne. They are called pig7iadas, and 
according to Loudon "constitute the principal 
riches of the inhabitants, where there was a 



160 CAPE COD 

drifting desert before." It seemed a nobler kind 
of grain to raise than corn even. 

A few years ago Truro was remarkable among 
the Cape towns for the number of sheep raised 
in it; but I was told that at this time only two 
men kept sheep in the town, and in 1855, a 
Truro boy ten years old told me that he had never 
seen one. They were formerly pastured on the 
unfenced lands or general fields, but now the 
owners were more particular to assert their rights, 
and it cost too much for fencing. The rails are 
cedar from Maine, and two rails will answer for 
ordinary purposes, but four are required for 
sheep. This was the reason assigned by one who 
had formerly kept them for not keeping them 
any longer. Fencing stuff is so expensive that I 
saw fences made with only one rail, and very 
often the rail when split was carefully tied with 
a string. In one of the villages I saw the next 
summer a cow tethered by a rope six rods long, 
the rope long in proportion as the feed was short 
and thin. Sixty rods, ay, all the cables of the 
Cape, would have been no more than fair. 
Tethered in the desert for fear that she would 
get into Arabia Felix ! I helped a man weigh a 
bundle of hay which he was selling to his neigh- 
bor, holding one end of a pole from which it 
swung by a steel-yard hook, and this was just 
half his whole crop. In short, the country looked 
so barren that I several times refrained from 



ACROSS THE CAPE 161 

asking the inhabitants for a string or a piece of 
wrapping-paper, for fear I should rob them, for 
they plainly were obliged to import these things 
as well as rails, and where there were no news- 
boys, I did not see what they would do for waste 
paper. 

The objects around us, the make-shifts of 
fishermen ashore, often made us look down to 
see if we were standing on terra firma. In the 
wells everywhere a block and tackle were used 
to raise the bucket, instead of a windlass, and 
by almost every house was laid up a spar or a 
plank or two full of auger-holes, saved from a 
wreck. The windmills were partly built of these, 
and they were worked into the public bridges. 
The light- house keeper, who was having his barn 
shingled, told me casually that he had made 
three thousand good shingles for that purpose 
out of a mast. You would sometimes see an old 
oar used for a rail. Frequently also some fair- 
weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm 
near the coast was nailed up against an out- 
house. I saw fastened to a shed near the light- 
house a long new sign with the words "Anglo 
Saxon" on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a 
useless part which the ship could afford to lose, 
or which the sailors had discharged at the same 
time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat 
as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off 

in passing through the Symplegades. 

11 



162 CAPE COD 

To the fisherman, the Cape itself is a sort of 
store-ship laden with supplies, — a safer and 
larger craft which carries the women and chil- 
dren, the old men and the sick ; and indeed sea- 
phrases are as common on it as on board a 
vessel. Thus is it ever with a sea-going people. 
The old Northmen used to speak of the "keel- 
ridge" of the country, that is, the ridge of the 
Doffrafield Mountains, as if the land were a 
boat turned bottom up. I was frequently re- 
minded of the Northmen here. The inhabitants 
of the Cape are often at once farmers and sea- 
rovers; thev are more than vikings or kings of 
the bays, for their sway extends over the open 
sea also. A farmer in Wellfleet, at whose house 
I afterward spent a night, who had raised fifty 
bushels of potatoes the previous year, which is a 
large crop for the Cape, and had extensive salt- 
works, pointed to his schooner, which lay in 
sight, in which he and his man and boy occa- 
sionally ran down the coast a-trading as far as 
the Capes of Virginia. This was his market- 
cart, and his hired man knew how to steer her. 
Thus he drove two teams a-field, 

"ere the high seas appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the mom." 

Though probably he would not hear much of the 
"gray fly" on his way to Virginia. 

A great proportion of the inhabitants of the 



ACROSS THE CAPE 163 

Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming 
on some ocean highway or other, and the history 
of one of their ordinary trips would cast the 
Argonautic expedition into the shade. I have 
just heard of a Cape Cod captain who was ex- 
pected home in the beginning of the winter from 
the West Indies, but was long since given up for 
lost, till his relations at length have heard with 
joy, that, after getting Avithin forty miles of Cape 
Cod light, he was driven back by nine successive 
gales to Key West, between Florida and Cuba, 
and was once again shaping his course for home. 
Thus he spent his winter. In ancient times the 
adventures of these two or three men and boys 
would have been made the basis of a myth, but 
now such tales are crowded into a line of short- 
hand signs, like an algebraic formula in the 
shipping news. "Wherever over the world," 
said Palfrey in his oration at Barnstable, "you 
see the stars and stripes floating, you may have 
good hope that beneath them some one will be 
found who can tell you the soundings of Barn- 
stable, or Wellfleet, or Chatham Harbor." 

I passed by the home of somebody's (or every- 
body's) Uncle Bill, one day over on the Plymouth 
shore. It was a schooner half keeled-up on the 
mud: we aroused the master out of a sound 
sleep at noonday, by thumping on the bottom of 
his vessel till he presented himself at the hatch- 
way, for we wanted to borrow his clam-digger. 



164 CAPE COD 

Meaning to make him a call, I looked out the 
next morning, and lo ! he had run over to "the 
Pines" the evening before, fearing an easterly 
storm. He outrode the great gale in the spring 
of 1851, dashing about alone in Plymouth Bay. 
He goes after rockweed, lighters vessels, and 
saves wrecks. I still saw him lying in the mud 
over at "the Pines" in the horizon, which place 
he could not leave if he would till flood tide. 
But he would not then probably. This waiting 
for the tide is a singular feature in life by the 
sea-shore. A frequent answer is, "Well! you 
can't start for two hours yet." It is something 
new to a landsman, and at first he is not disposed 
to wait. History says that "two inhabitants of 
Truro were the first who adventured to the Falk- 
land Isles in pursuit of whales. This voyage was 
undertaken in the year 1774, by the advice of 
Admiral Montague of the British navy, and was 
crowned with success." 

At the Pond Village we saw a pond three 
eighths of a mile long densely filled with cat-tail 
flags, seven feet high, — enough for all the 
coopers in New England. 

The western shore was nearly as sandy as the 
eastern, but the water was much smoother, and 
the bottom was partially covered with the slender 
grass-like seaweed (Zostera), which we had not 
seen on the Atlantic side ; there were also a few 
rude sheds for trying fish on the beach there, 



ACROSS THE CAPE 165 

which made it appear less wild. In the few 
marshes on this side we afterward saw Samphire, 
Rosemary, and other plants new to us inlanders. 
In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds 
of blackfish (the Social Whale, Globicephalus 
Melas of De Kay ; called also Black Whale-fish, 
Howling Whale, Bottlehead, etc.), fifteen feet 
or more in length, are driven ashore in a single 
school here. I witnessed such a scene in July, 
1855. A carpenter who was working at the light- 
house arriving early in the morning remarked 
that he did not know but he had lost fifty dollars 
by coming to his work; for as he came along 
the Bay side he heard them driving a school of 
blackfish ashore, and he had debated with him- 
self whether he should not go and join them and 
take his share, but had concluded to come to his 
work. After breakfast I came over to this place, 
about two miles distant, and near the beach 
met some of the fishermen returning from their 
chase. Looking up and down the shore, I could 
see about a mile south some large black masses 
on the sand, which I knew must be blackfish, 
and a man or two about them. As I walked 
along towards them I soon came to a huge car- 
cass whose head was gone and whose blubber 
had been stripped off some weeks before; the 
tide was just beginning to move it, and the 
stench compelled me to go a long way round. 
When I came to Great Hollow I found a fisher- 



166 CAPE COD 

man and some boys on the watch, and counted 
about thirty blackfish, just killed, with many 
lance wounds, and the water was more or less 
bloody around. They were partly on shore and 
partly in the water, held by a rope round their 
tails till the tide should leave them. A boat had 
been somewhat stove bv the tail of one. Thev 
were a smooth shining black, like India-rubber, 
and had remarkably simple and lumpish forms 
for animated creatures, with a blunt round snout 
or head, whale-like, and simple stiff-looking 
flippers. The largest were about fifteen feet 
long, but one or two were only five feet long, and 
still without teeth. The fisherman slashed one 
with his jackknife, to show me how thick the 
blubber was, — about three inches ; and as I 
passed my finger through the cut it w^as covered 
thick with oil. The blubber looked like pork, 
and this man said that when they were trjdng it 
the bovs would sometimes come round with a 

9/' 

piece of bread in one hand, and take a piece of 
blubber in the other to eat with it, preferring it 
to pork scraps. He also cut into the flesh be- 
neath, which was firm and red like beef, and he 
said that for his part he preferred it when fresh 
to beef. It is stated that in 1812 blackfish were 
used as food by the poor of Bretagne. They 
were waitino; for the tide to leave these fishes hio;h 
and dry, that they might strip oft' the blubber and 
carry it to their tiy- works in their boats, where 



ACROSS THE CAPE 167 

they try it on the beach. They get commonly 
a barrel of oil, worth fifteen or twenty dollars, to 
a fish. There were many lances and harpoons in 
the boats, — much slenderer instruments than I 
had expected. An old man came along the 
beach with a horse and wagon distributing the 
dinners of the fishermen, which their wives had 
put up in little pails and jugs, and which he had 
collected in the Pond Village, and for this service, 
I suppose, he received a share of the oil. If one 
could not tell his own pail, he took the first he 
came to. 

As I stood there they raised the cry of "an- 
other school," and we could see their black 
backs and their blowing about a mile northward, 
as they went leaping over the sea like horses. 
Some boats were already in pursuit there, driving 
them toward the beach. Other fishermen and 
boys running up began to jump into the boats 
and push them off from where I stood, and I 
might have gone too had I chosen. Soon there 
were twenty-five or thirty boats in pursuit, some 
large ones under sail, and others rowing with 
might and main, keeping outside of the school, 
those nearest to the fishes striking on the sides 
of their boats and blowing horns to drive them 
on to the beach. It was an exciting race. If 
they succeed in driving them ashore each boat 
takes one share, and then each man, but if they 
are compelled to strike them off shore each 



168 CAPE COD 

boat's company take what tliey strike. I walked 
rapidly along the shore toward the north, while 
the fishermen were rowincj still more swiftly to 
join their companions, and a little boy who 
walked bv mv side was concrratulatino- himself 
that his father's boat was beatino- another one. 
An old blind fisherman whom we met, inquired, 
"Where are thev .^ I can't see. Have thev ajot 
them ?" In the mean while the fishes had turned 
and were escaping northward toward Province- 
town, only occasionally the back of one beinsj 
seen. So the nearest crews were compelled to 
strike them, and we saw several boats soon made 
fast, each to its fish, which, four or five rods 
ahead, was drawing it like a race-horse straight 
toward the beach, leaping half out of water, 
blowins: blood and water from its hole, and 
leavincT a streak of foam behind. But they went 
ashore too far north for us, though we could see 
the fishermen leap out and lance them on the 
sand. It was just like pictures of whaling which 
I have seen, and a fisherman told me that it was 
nearly as dano^erous. In his first trial he had 
been much excited, and in his haste had used a 
lance with its scabbard on, but nevertheless had 
thrust it quite through his fish. 

I learned that a few davs before this one hun- 
dred and eiffhtv blackfish had been driven ashore 
in one school at Eastham, a little farther south, 
and that the keeper of Billingsgate Point light 



ACROSS THE CAPE 169 

went out one morning about the same time and 
cut his initials on the backs of a large school 
which had run ashore in the night, and sold his 
right to them to Provincetown for one thousand 
dollars, and probably Provincetown made as 
much more. x\nother fisherman told me that 
nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty 
were driven ashore in one school at Great Hol- 
low. In the Naturalists* Librarv, it is said that, 
in the winter of 1809-10, one thousand one hun- 
dred and ten "approached the shore of Hralfiord, 
Iceland, and were captured." De Kay says it is 
not known why they are stranded. But one 
fisherman declared to me that they ran ashore 
in pursuit of squid, and that they generally came 
on the coast about the last of Julv. 

About a week afterward, when I came to this 
shore, it was strewn, as far as I could see with a 
glass, with the carcasses of blackfish stripped of 
their blubber and their heads cut off; the latter 
lying higher up. Walking on the beach was out 
of the question on account of the stench. Be- 
tween Provincetown and Truro they lav in the 
very path of the stage. Yet no steps were taken 
to abate the nuisance, and men were catchinsr 
lobsters as usual just off the shore. I was told 
that thev did sometimes tow them out and sink 
them ; yet I wondered where they got the stones 
to sink them with. Of course thev mio:ht be 
made into guano, and Cape Cod is not so fertile 



170 CAPE COD 

that her inhabitants can afford to do -u^ithout 
this manure, — to sav nothinsj of the diseases 
they may produce. 

After mv return home, wishinoj to learn what 
was known about the Blackfish, I had recourse 
to the reports of the zoological surveys of the 
State, and I found that Storer had rightfully 
omitted it in his Report on the Fishes, since it is 
not a fish ; so I turned to Emmons's Report of 
the Mammalia, but was surprised to find that 
the seals and whales were omitted bv him, be- 
cause he had had no opportunity to obser\'e them. 
Considering how this State has risen and thriven 
bv its fisheries. — that the leo-islature which au- 
thorized the Zooloo-ical Survev sat under the 
emblem of a codfish, — that Nantucket and New 
Bedford are within our limits, — that an earlv 
riser mav find a thousand or fifteen hundred 

a/ 

dollars' worth of blackfish on the shore in a 
mornino;, — that the Pilgrims saw the Indians 
cutting up a blackfish on the shore at Eastham, 
and called a part of that shore "Grampus Bay," 
from the number of blackfish thev found there, 
before thev got to Plvmouth, — and that from 
that time to this these fishes have continued to 
enrich one or two counties almost annually, and 
that their decaying carcasses were now poisoning 
the air of one countv for more than thirtv miles, 
— I thought it remarkable that neither the popu- 
lar nor scientific name was to befound in a report 



ACROSS THE CAPE 171 

on our mammalia, — a catalogue of the produc- 
tions of our land and water. 

We had here, as well as all across the Cape, a 
fair view of Provincetown, five or six miles dis- 
tant over the water toward the west, under its 
shrubby sand-hills, with its harbor now full of 
vessels whose masts mingled with the spires of 
its churches, and gave it the appearance of a 
quite large seaport town. 

The inhabitants of all the lower Cape towns 
enjoy thus the prospect of two seas. Standing 
on the western or larboard shore, and looking; 
across to where the distant mainland looms, they 
can say. This is Massachusetts Bay ; and then, 
after an hour's sauntering walk, they may stand 
on the starboard side, beyond which no land 
is seen to loom, and say, This is the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

On our wav back to the lio-ht-house, bv whose 
white-washed tower we steered as securelv as the 
mariner by its light at night, we passed through 
a graveyard, which apparently was saved from 
being blown away by its slates, for they had 
enabled a thick bed of huckleberry-bushes to 
root themselves amid the oraves. We thought 
it would be worth the while to read the epitaphs 
where so many were lost at sea ; however, as not 
only their lives, but commonly their bodies also, 
were lost or not identified, there were fewer 
epitaphs of this sort than we expected, though 



172 CAPE COD 

there were not a few. Their graveyard is the 
ocean. Near the eastern side we started up a 
fox in a hollow, the only kind of wild quadruped, 
if I except a skunk in a salt-marsh, that we saw 
in all our walk (unless painted and box tortoises 
may be called quadrupeds). He was a large, 
plump, shaggy fellow, like a yellow dog, with, as 
usual, a white tip to his tail, and looked as if he 
fared well on the Cape. He cantered away 
into the shrub-oaks and bayberry-bushes which 
chanced to grow there, but were hardly high 
•enough to conceal him. I saw another the next 
summer leaping over the top of a beach-plum a 
little farther north, a small arc of his course 
(which I trust is not yet run), from which I en- 
deavored in vain to calculate his whole orbit : 
there were too many unknown attractions to be 
allowed for. I also saw the exuviae of a third 
fast sinking into the sand, and added the skull 
to my collection. Hence I concluded that they 
must be plenty thereabouts ; but a traveller may 
meet with more than an inhabitant, since he is 
more likely to take an unfrequented route across 
the country. They told me that in some years 
they died off in great numbers by a kind of mad- 
ness, under the effect of which they were seen 
whirling round and round as if in pursuit of 
their tails. In Crantz's account of Greenland, he 
says : "They (the foxes) live upon birds and their 
eggs, and, when they can't get them, upon crow- 



ACROSS THE CAPE 173 

berries, mussels, crabs, and what the sea casts 
out." 

Just before reaching the light-house, we saw 
the sun set in the Bay, — for standing on that 
narrow Cape was, as I have said, like being on 
the deck of a vessel, or rather at the masthead 
of a man-of-war, thirty miles at sea, though we 
knew that at the same moment the suii was set- 
ting behind our native hills, which were just 
below the horizon in that direction. This sight 
drove everything else quite out of our heads, and 
Homer and the Ocean came in again with a 
rush, — 

Ev 8 €Tr€(r f2K€av<3 Xafnrpov <f>do<i rjeXcoio, 

the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean. 



VIII 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 

THIS light-house, known to mariners as the 
Cape Cod or Highland Light, is one of 
our "primary sea-coast lights," and is 
usually the first seen by those approaching the 
entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe. 
It is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and 
forty-one from Boston Light. It stands about 
twenty rods from the edge of the bank, which is 
here formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and 
square, level and dividers, of a carpenter who was 
shingling a barn near by, and using one of those 
shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude sort of 
quadrant, with pins for sights and pivots, and got 
the angle of elevation of the Bank opposite the 
light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the 
length of its slope, and so measured its height on 
the shingle. It rises one hundred and ten feet 
above its immediate base, or about one hundred 
and twenty-three feet above mean low water. 
Graham, who has carefully surveyed the ex- 
tremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and 
thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an 
angle of forty degrees with the horizon, where I 
measured it, but the clay is generally much 




«3 









THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 175 

steeper. No cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half 
a mile farther south the bank is fifteen or twenty- 
five feet higher, and that appeared to be the 
highest land in North Truro. Even this vast 
clay bank is fast wearing away. Small streams 
of water trickling down it at intervals of two or 
three rods, have left the intermediate clay in the 
form of steep Gothic roofs fifty feet high or more, 
the ridges as sharp and rugged-looking as rocks ; 
and in one place the bank is curiously eaten out 
in the form of a large semicircular crater. 

According to the light-house keeper, the Cape 
is wasting here on both sides, though most on the 
eastern. In some places it had lost many rods 
within the last year, and, erelong, the light-house 
must be moved. We calculated, jrom his data, 
how soon the Cape would be quite worn away at 
this point, "for," said he, "I can remember sixty 
years back.' "^ We were even more surprised at 
this last announcement, — that is, at the slow 
waste of life and energy in our informant, for 
we had taken him to be not more than forty, — 
than at the rapid wasting of the Cape, and we 
thought that he stood a fair chance to outlive the 
former. 

Between this October and June of the next year 
I found that the bank had lost about forty feet 
in one place, opposite the light-house, and it was 
cracked more than forty feet farther from the 
edge at the last date, the shore being strewn with 



176 CAPE COD 

the recent rubbish. But I judged that generally 
it was not wearing away here at the rate of more 
than six feet annually. Any conclusions drawn 
from the observations of a few years or one gen- 
eration only are likely to prove false, and the 
Cape may balk expectation by its durability. 
In some places even a wrecker's foot-path down 
the bank lasts several years. One old inhabi- 
tant told us that when the light-house was built, 
in 1798, it was calculated that it would stand 
forty-five years, allowing the bank to waste one 
length of fence each year, "but," said he, "there 
it is" (or rather another near the same site, about 
twenty rods from the edge of the bank) . 

The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere, 
for one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago 
on the north of Provincetown whose ''bones'* 
(this was his word) are still visible many rods 
within the present line of the beach, half buried 
in sand. Perchance they lie alongside the tim- 
bers of a whale. The general statement of the 
inhabitants is that the Cape is wasting on 
both sides, but extending itself on particular 
points on the south and west, as at Chatham and 
Monomoy Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, 
and Race Points. James Freeman stated in his 
day that above three miles had been added to 
Monomoy Beach during the previous fifty years, 
and it is said to be still extending as fast as ever. 
A writer in the Massachusetts Magazine, in the 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 177 

last century, tells us that "when the English first 
settled upon the Cape, there was an island off 
Chatham, at three leagues' distance, called 
Webbs' Island, containing twenty acres, covered 
with red-cedar or savin. The inhabitants of Nan- 
tucket used to carry wood from it" ; but he adds 
that in his day a large rock alone marked the 
spot, and the water was six fathoms deep there. 
The entrance to Nauset Harbor, which was once 
in Eastham, has now travelled south into Orleans. 
The islands in Wellfleet Harbor once formed a 
continuous beach, though now small vessels pass 
between them. And so of many other parts of 
this coast. 

Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part 
of the Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to 
pay Paul. On the eastern side the sea appears 
to be everywhere encroaching on the land. Not 
only the land is undermined, and its ruins car- 
ried off by currents, but the sand is blown from 
the beach directly up the steep bank where it is 
one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers the 
original surface there many feet deep. If you 
sit on the edge you will have ocular demonstra- 
tion of this by soon getting your eyes full. Thus 
the bank preserves its height as fast as it is worn 
away. This sand is steadily travelling westward 
at a rapid rate, "more than a hundred yards," 
says one writer, within the memory of inhabitants 
now living ; so that in some places peat-meadows 

12 



178 CAPE COD 

are buried deep under the sand, and the peat is 
cut through it ; and in one phice a large peat- 
meadow has made its appearance on the shore 
in the bank covered many feet deep, and peat 
lias been cut there. This accounts for that threat 
pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. The 
old oysterman had told us that many years ago 
he lost a *'crittur" by her being mired in a swamp 
near the Atlantic side east of his house, and 
twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself en- 
tirely, but has since seen signs of it appearing 
on the beach. He also said that he had seen 
cedar stumps "as big as cart-wheels "( ! ) on the 
bottom of the Bav, three miles otf Billino-so-ate 
Point, when leaning over the side of his boat in 
pleasant weather, and that that was dry land 
not Ions: affo. Another told us that a log; canoe 
known to have been buried manv vears before 
on the Bav side at East Harbor in Truro, where 
the Cape is extremely narrow, appeared at length 
on the Atlantic side, the Cape having rolled 
over it, and an old woman said, — "Now, vou 
see, it is true what I told you, that the Cape is 
moving." 

The bars along the coast shift with everv storm, 
and in many places there is occasionally none at 
all. We ourselves observed the effect of a single 
storm with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855. 
It moved the sand on the beach opposite the 
light-house to the depth of six feet, and three 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 179 

rods in width as far as we could see north and 
south, and carried it bodily off no one knows 
exactly where, laying bare in one place a large 
rock five feet high which was invisible before, 
and narrowing the beach to that extent. There 
is usually, as I have said, no bathing on the back- 
side of the Cape, on account of the undertow, 
but when we were there last, the sea had, three 
months before, cast up a bar near this light- 
house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over 
which the tide did not flow, leaving a narrow 
cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between it 
and the shore, which afforded excellent bathing. 
This cove had from time to time been closed up 
as the bar travelled northward, in one instance 
imprisoning four or five hundred whiting and 
cod, which died there, and the water as often 
turned fresh, and finally gave place to sand. 
This bar, the inhabitants assured us, might be 
wholly removed, and the water six feet deep 
there in two or three days. 

The light-house keeper said that when the wind 
blowed strong on to the shore, the waves ate fast 
into the bank, but when it blowed off they took 
no sand away; for in the former case the wind 
heaped up the surface of the water next to the 
beach, and to preserve its equilibrium a strong 
undertow immediately set back again into the 
sea which carried with it the sand and whatever 
else was in the way, and left the beach hard to 



180 CAPE COD 

walk on ; but in the latter case the undertow set 
on and carried the sand with it, so that it was 
particularly difficult for shipwrecked men to get 
to land when the wind blowed on to the shore, 
but easier when it blowed off. This undertow, 
meeting the next surface wave on the bar which 
itself has made, forms part of the dam over which 
the latter breaks, as over an upright wall. The 
sea thus plays with the land holding a sand-bar 
in its mouth awhile before it swallows it, as a cat 
plays with a mouse; but the fatal gripe is sure 
to come at last. The sea sends its rapacious east 
wind to rob the land, but before the former has 
got far with its prey, the land sends its honest 
west wind to recover some of its own. But, ac- 
cording to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent, 
and distribution of sand-bars and banks are 
principally determined, not by winds and waves 
but by tides. 

Our host said that you would be surprised if 
you were on the beach when the wind blew a 
hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of the 
drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried 
directly northward and parallel with the shore as 
fast as a man can walk, by the inshore current, 
which sets strongly in that direction at flood 
tide. The strone'est swimmers also are carried 
along with it, and never gain an inch toward the 
beach. Even a large rock has been moved half 
a mile northward along- the beach. He assured 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 181 

us that the sea was never still on the back-side 
of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your 
head, so that a great part of the time you could 
not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest 
weather the waves run six or eight feet up the 
beach, though then you could get off on a plank. 
Champlain and Pourtrincourt could not land 
here in 1606, on account of the swell {la houlle), 
yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In 
the Sieur de la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes," 
my edition of which was published at Amsterdam 
in 1711, at page 530 he says : — 

*'Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i. e. a 
god], makes the great lames a la Tner, and over- 
turns canoes. Lames a la mer are the long vagues 
which are not broken (entrecoupees) , and such as 
one sees come to land all in one piece, from one 
end of a beach to another, so that, however little 
wind there may be, a shallop or a canoe could 
hardly land {aborder terre) without turning over, 
or being filled with water." 

But on the Bay side the water even at its edge 
is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Com- 
monly there are no boats used along this beach. 
There was a boat belonging to the Highland 
Light which the next keeper after he had been 
there a year had not launched, though he said that 
there was good fishing just off the shore. Gen- 
erally the Life Boats cannot be used when 
needed. When the waves run very high it is 



182 CAPE COD 

impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully 
you steer it, for it will often be completely cov- 
ered by the curving edge of the approaching 
breaker as by an arch, and so filled w4th water, 
or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly 
over backw^ards, and all the contents spilled 
out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the 
same way. 

I heard of a party who went off fishing back of 
Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in calm 
weather, who, when they had laden their boats 
with fish, and approached the land again, found 
such a swell breaking on it, though there was no 
wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At first 
they thought to pull for Provincetown, but night 
was coming on, and that was many miles distant. 
Their case seemed a desperate one. As often 
as they approached the shore and saw the terri- 
ble breakers that intervened, they were deterred. 
In short, they were thoroughly frightened. 
Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those 
in one boat chose a favorable opportunity, and 
succeeded, by skill and good luck, in reaching 
the land, but they were unwilling to take the re- 
sponsibility of telling the others when to come 
in, and as the other helmsman was inexperienced, 
their boat was swamped at once, yet all managed 
to save themselves. 

Much smaller waves soon make a boat "nail- 
sick," as the phrase is. The keeper said that 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 183 

after a long and strong blow there would be three 
large waves, each successively larger than the 
last, and then no large ones for some time, and 
that, when they wished to land in a boat, they 
came in on the last and largest wave. Sir Thomas 
Browne (as quoted in Brand's Popular Antiqui- 
ties, p. 372), on the subject of the tenth wave 
being "greater or more dangerous than any 
other," after quoting Ovid, — 

"Qui venit hie fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes 
Posterior nono est, undecimo que prior," — 

says, "Which, notwithstanding, is evidently 
false; nor can it be made out either by obser- 
vation either upon the shore or the ocean, as we 
have with diligence explored in both. And 
surely in vain we expect regularity in the waves 
of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof, 
as we may in its general reciprocations, whose 
causes are constant, and effects therefore corre- 
spondent; whereas its fluctuations are but mo- 
tions subservient, which winds, storms, shores, 
shelves, and every interjacency, irregulates." 

We read that the Clay Pounds, were so called 
"because vessels have had the misfortune to be 
pounded against it in gales of wind," which we 
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are 
small ponds here, upheld by the clay, which were 
formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or 
Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. Water 



184 CAPE COD 

is found in the clay quite near the surface; but 
we heard of one man who had sunk a well in the 
sand close by, "till he could see stars at noon- 
day," without finding any. Over this bare High- 
land the wind has full sweep. Even in July it 
blows the wings over the heads of the young 
turkeys, which do not know enough to head 
against it; and in gales the doors and windows 
are blown in, and you must hold on to the light- 
house to prevent being blown into the Atlantic. 
They who merely keep out on the beach in a 
storm in the winter are sometimes rewarded by 
the Humane Society. If you would feel the full 
force of a tempest, take up your residence on the. 
top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland 
Light, in Truro. 

It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast 
away on the east shore of Truro than anywhere 
in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding that 
this light-house has since been erected, after 
almost every storm we read of one or more 
vessels wrecked here, and sometimes more than 
a dozen wrecks are visible from this point at one 
time. The inhabitants hear the crash of vessels 
going to pieces as they sit round their hearths, 
and they commonly date from some memorable 
shipwreck. If the history of this beach could be 
written from beginning to end, it would be a 
thrilling page in the history of commerce. 

Truro was settled in the year .1700 as Danger- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 185 

field. This was a very appropriate name, for I 
afterward read on a monument in the graveyard, 
near Pamet River, the following inscription : — 

Sacred 

to the memory of 

57 citizens of Truro, 

who were lost in seven 

vessels, which 

foundered at sea in 

the memorable gale 

of Oct. 3d, 1841. 

Their names and ages by families were recorded 
on different sides of the stone. They are said to 
have been lost on George's Bank, and I was told 
that only one vessel drifted ashore on the back- 
side of the Cape, with the boys locked into the 
cabin and drowned. It is said that the homes of 
all were "within a circuit of two miles." Twenty- 
eight inhabitants of Dennis were lost in the same 
gale; and I read that "in one day, immediately 
after this storm, nearly or quite one hundred 
bodies were taken up and buried on Cape Cod." 
The Truro Insurance Company failed for want 
of skippers to take charge of its vessels. But the 
surviving inhabitants went a-fishing again the 
next year as usual. I found that it would not 
do to speak of shipwrecks there, for almost 
every family has lost some of its members at sea. 
"Who lives in that house .^" I inquired. "Three 
widows," was the reply. The stranger and the 
inhabitant view the shore with very different 



186 CAPE COD 

eyes. The former may have come to see and 
admire the ocean in a storm ; but the latter looks 
on it as the scene where his nearest relatives were 
wrecked. When I remarked to an old wrecker 
partially blind, who w^as sitting on the edge of 
the bank smoking a pipe, which he had just lit 
with a match of dried beach-grass, that I sup- 
posed he liked to hear the sound of the surf, 
he answered: "No, I do not like to hear the 
sound of the surf." He had lost at least one son 
in "the memorable gale," and could tell many 
a tale of the shipwrecks which he had witnessed 
there. 

In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bel- 
lamy was led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the 
captain of a snow which he had taken, to whom 
he had offered his vessel again if he would pilot 
him into Provincetown Harbor. Tradition says 
that the latter threw over a burning tar-barrel in 
the night, which drifted ashore, and the pirates 
followed it. A storm coming on, their whole fleet 
was wrecked, and more than a hundred dead 
bodies lay along the shore. Six who escaped 
shipwreck were executed. "At times to this day " 
(1793), says the historian of Wellfleet, "there 
are King William and Queen Mary's coppers 
picked up, and pieces of silver called cob-money. 
The violence of the seas moves the sands on the 
outer bar, so that at times the iron caboose of the 
ship [that is, Bellamy's] at low ebbs has beeu 




An old wrecker at home 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 187 

seen." Another tells us that, "For many years 
after this shipwreck, a man of a very singular 
and frightful aspect used every spring and au- 
tumn to be seen travelling on the Cape, who was 
supposed to have been one of Bellamy's crew. 
The presumption is that he went to some place 
where money had been secreted by the pirates, 
to get such a supply as his exigencies required. 
When he died, many pieces of gold were found in 
a girdle which he constantly wore." 

As I was walking on the beach here in my last 
visit, looking for shells and pebbles, just after 
that storm, which I have mentioned as movincr 
the sand to a great depth, not knowing but I 
might find some cob-money, I did actually pick 
up a French crown piece, worth about a dollar 
and six cents, near high- water mark, on the still 
moist sand, just under the abrupt, caving base 
of the bank. It was of a dark slate color, and 
looked like a flat pebble, but still bore a very 
distinct and handsome head of Louis XV., and 
the usual legend on the reverse. Sit Nomen Do- 
mini Benedictiim (Blessed be the Name of the 
Lord), a pleasing sentiment to read in the sands 
of the sea-shore, whatever it might be stamped 
on, and I also made out the date, 1741. Of 
course, I thought at first that it was that same 
old button which I have found so many times, 
but my knife soon showed the silver. Afterward, 
rambling on the bars at low tide, I cheated my 



188 CAPE COD 

companion by holding up round shells (Scii- 
tellce) between my fingers, whereupon he quickly 
stripped and came off to me. 

In the Revolution, a British ship of war called 
the Somerset was wrecked near the Clay Pounds, 
and all on board, some hundreds in number, were 
taken prisoners. My informant said that he had 
never seen any mention of this in the histories, 
but that at any rate he knew of a silver watch, 
which one of those prisoners by accident left 
there, which was still going to tell the story. 
But this event is noticed by some writers. 

The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham 
dragging for anchors and chains just oft' this 
shore. She had her boats out at the work while 
she shuffled about on various tacks, and, when 
anything was found, drew up to hoist it on board. 
It is a singular employment, at which men are 
regularly hired and paid for their industr}', to 
hunt to-day in pleasant weather for anchors 
which have been lost, — the sunken faith and 
hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain ; 
now, perchance, it is the rusty one of some old 
pirate's ship or Norman fisherman, vrhose cable 
parted here two hundred years ago ; and now the 
best bower anchor of a Canton or a California 
ship, which has gone about her business. If the 
roadsteads of the spiritual ocean could be thus 
dragged, what rusty flukes of hope deceived and 
parted chain-cables of faith might again be wind- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 189 

lassed aboard ! enough to sink the finder's craft, 
or stock new navies to the end of time. The 
bottom of the sea is strewn with anchors, some 
deeper and some shallower, and alternately cov- 
ered and uncovered by the sand, perchance with 
a small length of iron cable still attached, — to 
which where is the other end ? So many uncon- 
cluded tales to be continued another time. So, 
if we had diving-bells adapted to the spiritual 
deeps, we should see anchors with their cables 
attached, as thick as eels in vinegar, all wriggling 
vainly toward their holding-ground. But that is 
not treasure for us which another man has lost; 
rather it is for us to seek what no other man 
has found or can find, — not be Chatham men, 
dragging for anchors. 

The annals of this voracious beach ! who could 
write them, unless it were a shipwrecked sailor ? 
How many who have seen it have seen it only in 
the midst of danger and distress, the last strip of 
earth which their mortal eyes beheld. Think of 
the amount of suffering which a single strand has 
witnessed. The ancients would have represented 
it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more terrible 
than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of 
Truro told me that about a fortnight after the 
St. John was wrecked at Cohasset he found two 
bodies on the shore at the Clay Pounds. They 
were those of a man, and a corpulent woman. 
The man had thick boots on, though his head 



190 CAPE COD 

was off, but "it was alongside." It took the 
finder some weeks to get over the sight. Per- 
haps they were man and wife, and whom God 
had joined the ocean currents had not put 
asunder. Yet by what shght accidents at first 
may they have been associated in their drifting. 
Some of the bodies of those passengers were 
picked up far out at sea, boxed up and sunk; 
some brouo-ht ashore and buried. There are 
more consequences to a shipwreck than the un- 
derwriters notice. The Gulf Stream may return 
some to their native shores, or drop them in 
some out-of-the-way cave of Ocean, where time 
and the elements will write new riddles with 
their bones. — But to return to land again. 

In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the 
summer, two hundred holes of the Bank Swal- 
low within a space six rods long, and there were 
at least one thousand old birds within three 
times that distance, twittering over the surf. I 
had never associated them in my thoughts with 
the beach before. One little boy who had been 
a-birds-nesting had got eighty swallows' eggs 
for his share ! Tell it not to the Humane Society. 
There were many young birds on the clay be- 
neath, which had tumbled out and died. Also 
there were many Crow-blackbirds hopping about 
in the dry fields, and the Upland Plover were 
breeding close by the light-house. The keeper 
had once cut off one's wing while mowing, as 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 191 

she sat on her eggs there. This is also a favorite 
resort for gunners in the fall to shoot the Golden 
Plover. As around the shores of a pond are seen 
devil's-needles, butterflies, etc., so here, to my 
surprise, I saw at the same season great devil's- 
needles of a size proportionably larger, or nearly 
as big as my finger, incessantly coasting up and 
down the edge of the bank, and butterflies also 
were hovering over it, and I never saw so many 
dorr-bugs and beetles of various kinds as strewed 
the beach. They had apparently flown over the 
bank in the night, and could not get up again, 
and some had perhaps fallen into the sea and 
were washed ashore. They may have been in 
part attracted by the light-house lamps. 

The Clav Pounds are a more fertile tract than 
usual. We saw some fine patches of roots and 
corn here. As generally on the Cape, the plants 
had little stalk or leaf, but ran remarkably to 
seed. The corn was hardly more than half as 
high as in the interior, yet the ears were large and 
full, and one farmer told us that he could raise 
forty bushels on an acre without manure, and 
sixty with it. The heads of the rye also were 
remarkably large. The Shadbush (Amelanchier) ^ 
Beach Plums, and Blueberries {Vaccinium Penn- 
sylvanicum) , like the apple-trees and oaks, were 
very dwarfish, spreading over the sand, but at 
the same time very fruitful. The blueberry was 
but an inch or two high, and its fruit often rested 



192 CAPE COD 

on the ground, so that you did not suspect the 
presence of the bushes, even on those bare hills, 
until you were treading on them. I thought 
that this fertility must be owing mainly to the 
abundance of moisture in the atmosphere, for I 
observed that what little grass there was was re- 
markably laden with dew in the morning, and in 
summer dense imprisoning fogs frequently last 
till midday, turning one's beard into a wet nap- 
kin about his throat, and the oldest inhabitant 
may lose his way within a stone's throw of his 
house or be obliged to follow the beach for a 
guide. The brick house attached to the light- 
house was exceedingly damp at that season, and, 
writing-paper lost all its stiffness in it. It was 
impossible to dry your towel after bathing, or to 
press flowers without their mildewing. The air 
was so moist that we rarely wished to drink, 
though we could at all times taste the salt on our 
lips. Salt was rarely used at table, and our host 
told us that his cattle invariably refused it when 
it was offered them, they got so much with their 
grass and at every breath, but he said that a sick 
horse or one just from the country would some- 
times take a hearty draught of salt water, and 
seemed to like it and be the better for it. 

It was surprising to see how much water was 
contained in the terminal bud of the sea-side 
golden-rod, standing in the sand early in July, 
and also how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flour- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 193 

ished even in pure saiid. A man travelling by 
the shore near there not long before us noticed 
something green growing in the pure sand of the 
beach, just at high-water mark, and on approach- 
ing found it to be a bed of beets flourishing vig- 
orously, probably from seed washed out of the 
Franklin. Also beets and turnips came up in 
the sea-weed used for manure in many parts of 
the Cape. This suggests how various plants may 
have been dispersed over the world to distant 
islands and continents. Vessels, with seeds in 
their cargoes, destined for particular ports, where 
perhaps they were not needed, have been cast 
away on desolate islands, and though their crews 
perished, some of their seeds have been preserved. 
Out of many kinds a few would find a soil and 
climate adapted to them, become naturalized, 
and perhaps drive out the native plants at last, 
and so fit the land for the habitation of man. It 
is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and 
for the time lamentable shipwrecks may thus 
contribute a new vegetable to a continent's stock, 
and prove on the whole a lasting blessing to its 
inhabitants. Or winds and currents might effect 
the same without the intervention of man. What 
indeed are the various succulent plants which 
grow on the beach but such beds of beets and 
turnips, sprung originally from seeds which per- 
haps were cast on the waters for this end, though 

we do not know the Franklin which they came 

13 



194 CAPE COD 

out of ? In ancient times some Mr. Bell ( ?) was 
sailing this way in his ark with seeds of rocket, 
salt-wort, sandwort, beachgrass, samphire, bay- 
berry, poverty -grass, etc., all nicely labelled with 
directions, intending to establish a nursery some- 
where; and did not a nursery get established, 
though he thought that he had failed .? 

About the light-house I observed in the sum- 
mer the pretty Polygala polygama, spreading 
ray- wise flat on the ground, white pasture this- 
tles {Cirsium pumilum), and amid the shrubbery 
the Smilax glauca, which is commonly said not 
to grow so far north ; near the edge of the banks 
about half a mile southward, the broom crow- 
berry {Empetrum Conradii), for which Plymouth 
is the only locality in Massachusetts usually 
named, forms pretty green mounds four or five 
feet in diameter by one foot high, — soft, springy 
beds for the wayfarer. I saw it afterward in 
Provincetown, but prettiest of all the scarlet pim- 
pernel, or poor-man's weather-glass {Anagallis- 
arvensis), greets you in fair weather on almost 
every square yard of sand. From Yarmouth, I 
have received the Chrysopsis jalcata (golden 
aster), and Vaccinium stamineum (Deerberry or 
Squaw Huckleberry) , with fruit not edible, some- 
times as large as a cranberry (Sept. 7). 

The Highland Light-house,^ where we were 

* The light-house has since been rebuilt, and shows a Fresnel 
light. 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 195 

staying, is a substantial-looking building of 
brick, painted white, and surmounted by an iron 
cap. Attached to it is the dwelling of the keeper, 
one story high, also of brick, and built by gov- 
ernment. As we were going to spend the night 
in a light-house, we wished to make the most of 
so novel an experience, and therefore told our 
host that we would like to accompany him when 
he went to light up. At rather early candle-light 
he lighted a small Japan lamp, allowing it to 
smoke rather more than we like on ordinary 
occasions, and told us to follow him. He led the 
way first through his bedroom, which was placed 
nearest to the light-house, and then through a 
long, narrow, covered passage-way, between 
whitewashed walls like a prison entry, into the 
lower part of the light-house, where many great 
butts of oil were arranged around ; thence we 
ascended by a winding and open iron stairway, 
with a steadily increasing scent of oil and lamp- 
smoke, to a trap-door in an iron floor, and 
tlirouo;li this into the lantern. It was a neat 
building, with everything in apple-pie order, and 
no danger of anvthing; rustino; there for want of 
oil. The light consisted of fifteen argand lamps, 
placed within smooth concave reflectors twenty- 
one inches in diameter, and arranged in two 
horizontal circles one above the other, facing 
every way excepting directly down the Cape. 
These were surrounded, at a distance of two or 



196 CAPE COD 

three feet, by large plate-glass windows, which 
defied the storms, with iron sashes, on which 
rested the iron cap. All the iron work, except 
the floor, was painted white. And thus the light- 
house was completed. We walked slowly round 
in that narrow space as the keeper lighted each 
lamp in succession, conversing with him at the 
same moment that many a sailor on the deep 
witnessed the liijhtino; of the Hio:hland Lio;ht. 
His duty was to fill and trim and light his lamps, 
and keep bright the reflectors. He filled them 
every morning, and trimmed them commonly 
once in the course of the night. He complained 
of the quality of the oil which was furnished. 
This house consumes about eiHit hundred o^allons 
in a year, which cost not far from one dollar a 
gallon; but perhaps a few lives would be saved 
if better oil were provided. Another light-house 
keeper said that the same proportion of winter- 
strained oil was sent to the southernmost light- 
house in the Union as to the most northern. 
Formerlv, when this lio;ht-house had windows 
with small and thin panes, a severe storm would 
sometimes break the Mass, and then thev were 
obliged to put up a wooden shutter in haste to 
save their lio-hts and reflectors, — and some- 
times in tempests, when the mariner stood most 
in need of their ouidance, thev had thus nearlv 
converted the light-house into a dark lantern, 
which emitted only a few feeble rays, and those 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 197 

commonly on the land or lee side. He spoke of 
the anxiety and sense of responsibility which he 
felt in cold and stormy nights in the winter ; when 
he knew^ that many a poor fellow was depending 
on him, and his lamps burned dimly, the oil 
being chilled. Sometimes he was obliged to 
warm the oil in a kettle in his house at midnight, 
and fill his lamps over again, — for he could not 
have a fire in the light-house, it produced such a 
sweat on the windows. His successor told 
me that he could not keep too hot a fire in 
such a case. All this because the oil was poor. 
The government lighting the mariners on its 
wintry coast with summer-strained oil, to save 
expense ! That were surely a summer-strained 
mercy. 

This keeper's successor, who kindly enter- 
tained me the next year stated that one extremely 
cold night, when this and all the neighboring 
lights were burning summer oil, but he had been 
provident enough to reserve a little winter oil 
against emergencies, he was waked up with anx- 
iety, and found that his oil w^as congealed, and 
his lights almost extinguished; and when, after 
manv hours' exertion, he had succeeded in re- 
plenishing his reservoirs w^th winter oil at the 
wick end, and with diflSculty had made them 
burn, he looked out and found that the other 
lights in the neighborhood, which were usually 
visible to him, had gone out, and he heard after- 



198 CAPE COD 

ward that the Pamet River and Billingsgate 
Lights also had been extinguished. 

Our host said that the frost, too, on the win- 
dows caused him much trouble, and in sultry 
summer nights the moths covered them and 
dimmed his lights; sometimes even small birds 
flew against the thick plate glass, and were found 
on the ground beneath in the morning with their 
necks broken. In the spring of 1855 he found 
nineteen small yellow-birds, perhaps goldfinches 
or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead around the light- 
house; and sometimes in the fall he had seen 
where a golden plover had struck the glass in the 
night, and left the down and the fatty part of its 
breast on it. 

Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep 
his light shining before men. Surely the light- 
house keeper has a responsible, if an easy, oflRce. 
When his lamp goes out, he goes out ; or, at most, 
only one such accident is pardoned. 

I thought it a pity that some poor student did 
not live there, to profit by all that light, since he 
would not rob the mariner. "Well," he said, "I 
do sometimes come up here and read the news- 
paper when they are noisy down below." Think 
of fifteen argand lamps to read the newspa- 
per by ! Government oil ! — light, enough, per- 
chance, to read the Constitution by ! I thought 
that he should read nothing less than his Bible 
by that light. I had a classmate who fitted for 






THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 199 

college by the lamps of a light-house, which was 
more light, we think, than the University 
afforded. 

When we had come down and walked a dozen 
rods from the light-house, we found that we could 
not get the full strength of its light on the narrow 
strip of land between it and the shore, being too 
low for the focus, and we saw only so many 
feeble and rayless stars; but at forty rods in- 
land we could see to read, though we were still 
indebted to only one lamp. Each reflector sent 
forth a separate "fan" of light, — one shone on 
the windmill, and one in the hollow, while the 
intervening spaces were in shadow. This light 
is said to be visible twentv nautical miles and 
more from an observer fifteen feet above the 
level of the sea. We could see the revolving light 
at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about nine 
miles distant, and also the light on Long Point, 
at the entrance of Provincetown Harbor, and 
one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights, 
across the Bay, nearly in a range with the last, 
like a star in the horizon. The keeper thought 
that the other Plymouth Light was concealed by 
being exactly in a range with the Long Point 
Light. He told us that the mariner was some- 
times led astray by a mackerel fisher's lantern, 
who was afraid of being run down in the night, 
or even by a cottager's light, mistaking them for 
some well-known light on the coast, and, when 



200 CAPE COD 

he discovered his mistake, was wont to curse the 
prudent fisher or the wakeful cottager without 
reason. 

Though it was once declared that Providence 
placed this mass of clay here on purpose to erect 
a light-house on, the keeper said that the light- 
house should have been erected half a mile far- 
ther south, where the coast begins to bend, and 
where the light could be seen at the same time 
with the Nauset Lights, and distinguished from 
them. They now talk of building one there. It 
happens that the present one is the more useless 
now, so near the extremity of the Cape, because 
other light-houses have since been erected there. 

Among the many regulations of the Light- 
house Board, hanging against the wall here, 
many of them excellent, perhaps, if there were a 
regiment stationed here to attend to them, there 
is one requiring the keeper to keep an account 
of the number of vessels which pass his light 
during the day. But there are a hundred vessels 
in sight at once, steering in all directions, many 
on the very verge of the horizon, and he must 
have more eyes than Argus, and be a good deal 
farther-sighted, to tell which are passing his 
light. It is an employment in some respects best 
suited to the habits of the gulls which coast up 
and down here, and circle over the sea. 

I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th 
of June following, a particularly clear and beau- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 201 

tiful morning, he rose about half an hour before 
sunrise, and having a Httle time to spare, for his 
custom was to extinguish his lights at sunrise, 
walked down toward the shore to see what he 
might find. When he got to the edge of the 
bank he looked up, and, to his astonishment, 
saw the sun rising, and already part way above 
the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, 
he made haste back, and though it was still too 
early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and 
when he had got through and come down, he 
looked out the window, and, to his still greater 
astonishment, saw the sun just where it was 
before, two-thirds above the horizon. He showed 
me where its rays fell on the wall across the 
room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when 
he had done, there was the sun still at the same 
height. Whereupon, not trusting to his own eyes 
any longer, he called up his wife to look at it, 
and she saw it also. There were vessels in sight 
on the ocean, and their crews, too, he said, must 
have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained 
at that height for about fifteen minutes by the 
clock, and then rose as usual, and nothing else ex- 
traordinary happened during that day. Though 
accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed 
nor heard of such a phenomenon before. I sug- 
gested that there might have been a cloud in the 
horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun, 
and his clock was only as accurate as the average ; 



202 CAPE COD 

or perhaps, as he denied the possibility of this, 
it was such a looming of the sun as is said to 
occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John 
Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, that 
when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, the 
horizontal refraction varied so much one morn- 
ing that "the upper limb of the sun twice ap- 
peared at the horizon before it finally rose." 

He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom 
the sun looms, when there are so many millions 
to whom it glooms rather, or who never see it 
till an hour after it has risen. But it behooves 
us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and 
burning to the last, and not trust to the sun's 
looming. 

This keeper remarked that the centre of the 
flame should be exactly opposite the centre of the 
reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was not 
careful to turn down his wicks in the morning, 
the sun falling on the reflectors on the south side 
of the building would set fire to them, like a 
burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would 
look up at noon and see them all lighted ! When 
your light is ready to give light, it is readiest to 
receive it, and the sun will light it. His successor 
said that he had never known them to blaze in 
such a case, but merely to smoke. 

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a 
sea turn or shallow fog while I was there the 
next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 203 

of the bank twenty rods distant, appeared like a 
mountain pasture in the horizon. I was com- 
pletely deceived by it, and I could then under- 
stand why mariners sometimes ran ashore in 
such cases, especially in the night, supposing it 
to be far away, though they could see the land. 
Once since this, being in a large oyster boat two 
or three hundred miles from here, in a dark 
night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land 
and water, we came so near to running on to the 
land before our skipper was aware of it, that the 
first warning was my hearing the sound of the 
surf under my elbow. I could almost have 
jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go about 
very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant 
light for which we were steering, supposing it a 
light-house five or six miles off, came through 
the cracks of a fisherman's bunk not more than 
six rods distant. 

The keeper entertained us handsomely in his 
solitary little ocean house. He was a man of 
singular patience and intelligence, who, when 
our queries struck him, rung as clear as a bell in 
response. The light-house lamps a few feet dis- 
tant shone full into my chamber, and made it as 
bright as day, so I knew exactly how the High- 
land Light bore all that night, and I was in no 
danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this 
was as still as a summer night. I thought, as I 
lay there, half awake and half asleep, looking 



204 CAPE COD 

upward through the window at the Hghts above 
my head, how many sleepless eyes from far 
out on the Ocean stream — mariners of all na- 
tions spinning their yarns through the various 
watches of the night — were directed toward my 
couch. 



tt 



IX 

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 

THE light-house lamps were still burning, 
though now with a silvery lustre, when I 
rose to see the sun come out of the Ocean ; 
for he still rose eastward of us; but I was con- 
vinced that he must have come out of a dry bed 
beyond that stream, though he seemed to come 
out of the water. 

"The 8un once more touched the fields, 
Mounting to heaven from the fair flowing 
Deep- running Ocean." 

Now we saw countless sails of mackerel fishers 
abroad on the deep, one fleet in the north just 
pouring round the Cape, another standing down 
toward Chatham, and our host's son went off to 
join some lagging member of the first which had 
not yet left the Bay. 

Before we left the light-house we were obliged 
to anoint our shoes faithfully with tallow, for 
walking on the beach, in the salt water and the 
sand, had turned them red and crisp. To coun- 
terbalance this, I have remarked that the sea- 
shore, even where muddy, as it is not here, is 
singularly clean; for notwithstanding the spat- 
tering of the water and mud and squirting of 



206 CAPE COD 

the clams while walking to and from the boat, 
your best black pants retain no stain nor dirt, 
such as they would acquire from walking in the 
country. 

We have heard that a few days after this, when 
the Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy 
emissaries from Provincetown made particular 
inquiries concerning us at this light-house. In- 
deed, they traced us all the way down the Cape, 
and concluded that we came by this unusual 
route down the back-side and on foot, in order 
•that we might discover a way to get off with our 
booty when we had committed the robbery. 
The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare 
withal, that it is wellnigh impossible for a stranger 
to visit it without the knowledge of its inhabi- 
tants generally, unless he is wrecked on to it in 
the night. So, when this robbery occurred, all 
their suspicions seem to have at once centred on 
us two travellers who had just passed down it. 
If we had not chanced to leave the Cape so soon, 
we should probably have been arrested. The 
real robbers were two young men from Worcester 
County who travelled with a centre-bit, and are 
said to have done their work very neatly. But 
the only bank that we pried into was the great 
Cape Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of 
an old French crown piece, some shells and 
pebbles, and the materials of this story. 

Again we took to the beach for another day 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 207 

(October 13), walking along the shore of the re- 
sounding sea, determined to get it into us. We 
wished to associate with the Ocean until it lost 
the pond-like look which it wears to a country- 
man. We still thought that we could see the 
other side. Its surface was still more sparkling 
than the day before, and we beheld "the count- 
less smilings of the ocean waves"; though some 
of them were pretty broad grins, for still the 
wind blew and the billows broke in foam along 
the beach. The nearest beach to us on the other 
side, whither we looked, due east, was on the 
coast of Galicia, in Spain, whose capital is San- 
tiago, though by old poets' reckoning it should 
have been Atlantis or the Hesperides; but 
heaven is found to be farther west now. At first 
we were abreast of that part of Portugal entre 
Douro e Mino, and then Galicia and the port of 
Pontevedra opened to us as we walked along; 
but we did not enter, the breakers ran so high. 
The bold headland of Cape Finisterre, a little 
north of east, jutted toward us next, with its 
vain brag, for we flung back, — "Here is Cape 
Cod, — Cape Land's-Beginning." A little in- 
dentation toward the north, — for the land 
loomed to our imaginations by a common mi- 
rage, — we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we 
sang : — 

"There we lay, till next day. 
In the Bay of Biscay O ! " 



208 CAPE COD 

A little south of east was Palos, where Colum- 
bus weighed anchor, and farther yet the pillars 
which Hercules set up; concerning which when 
we inquired at the top of our voices what was 
written on them, — for we had the morning sun 
in our faces, and could not see distinctly, — the 
inhabitants shouted Ne plus ultra (no more 
beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only, 
plus ultra (more beyond), and over the Bay 
westward was echoed ultra (beyond). We spoke 
to them through the surf about the Far West, the 
true Hesperia, eco Trepa? or end of the day, the 
This Side Sundown, where the sun was extin- 
guished in the Pacific, and we advised them tp 
pull up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs 
on the shore of California, whither all our folks 
were gone, — the only fie plus ultra now. 
Whereat they looked crestfallen on their cliffs, 
for we had taken the wind out of all their sails. 

We could not perceive that any of their leav- 
ings washed up here, though we picked up a 
child's toy, a small dismantled boat, which may 
have been lost at Pontevedra. 

The Cape became narrower and narrower as 
we approached its wrist between Truro and 
Provincetown, and the shore inclined more de- 
cidedly to the west. At the head of East Harbor 
Creek, the Atlantic is separated but by half a 
dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of the 
Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 209 

off for the last ten miles to the extremity at Race 
Point, though the highest parts, which are called 
"islands" from their appearance at a distance 
on the sea, were still seventy or eighty feet above 
the Atlantic, and afforded a good view of the 
latter, as well as a constant view of the Bay, 
there being no trees nor a hill suflficient to inter- 
rupt it. Also the sands began to invade the land 
more and more, until finally they had entire 
possession from sea to sea, at the narrowest part. 
For three or four miles between Truro and 
Provincetown there were no inhabitants from 
shore to shore, and there were but three or four 
houses for twice that distance. 

As we plodded along, either by the edge of the 
ocean, where the sand was rapidly drinking up 
the last wave that wet it, or over the sand-hills 
of the bank, the mackerel fleet continued to pour 
round the Cape north of us, ten or fifteen miles 
distant, in countless numbers, schooner after 
schooner, till they made a city on the water. 
They were so thick that many appeared to be 
afoul of one another; now all standing on this 
tack, now on that. We saw how well the 
New-Englanders had followed up Captain John 
Smith's suggestions w^ith regard to the fisheries, 
made in 1616, — to what a pitch they had carried 
"this contemptible trade of fish," as he signifi- 
cantly styles it, and were now equal to the Hol- 
landers whose example he holds up for the 

14 



210 CAPE COD 

English to emulate; notwithstanding that "in 
this faculty," as he says, "the former are so 
naturalized, and of their vents so certainly ac- 
quainted, as there is no likelihood they will ever 
be paralleled, having two or three thousand 
busses, flat-bottoms, sword-pinks, todes, and 
such like, that breeds them sailors, mariners, 
soldiers, and merchants, never to be wrought 
out of that trade and fit for any otlier." We 
thought that it would take all these names and 
more to describe the numerous craft which we 
saw. Even then, some years before our "re- 
nowned sires" with their "peerless dames" 
stepped on Plymouth Rock, he wrote, "New- 
foundland doth yearly freight neir eight hundred 
sail of ships with a silly, lean, skinny, poor-john, 
and cor fish," though all their supplies must be 
annually transported from Europe. Why not 
plant a colony here then, and raise those sup- 
plies on the spot.'^ "Of all the four parts of the 
world," says he, "that I have yet seen, not in- 
habited, could I have but means to transport a 
colony, I would rather live here than anywhere. 
And if it did not maintain itself, were we but 
once indifferently well fitted, let us starve." 
Then "fishing before your doors," you "may 
every night sleep quietly ashore, with good cheer 
and what fires you will, or, when you please, 
with your wives and family." Already he an- 
ticipates "the new towns in New England in 




Towing along shore 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 211 

memory of their old," — and who knows what 
may be discovered in the "heart and entrails" 
of the land, "seeing even the very edges," etc., 
etc. 

All this has been accomplished, and more, 
and where is Holland now ? Verily the Dutch 
have taken it. There was no long interval be- 
tween the suggestion of Smith and the eulogy of 
Burke. 

Still one after another the mackerel schooners 
hove in sight round the head of the Cape, 
"whitening all the sea road," and we watched 
each one for a moment with an undivided in- 
terest. It seemed a pretty sport. Here in the 
country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that 
go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it ap- 
peared as if every able-bodied man and helpful 
boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure ex- 
cursion in their yachts, and all would at last land 
and have a chowder on the Cape. The gazetteer 
tells you gravely how many of the men and boys 
of these towns are engaged in the whale, cod, 
and mackerel fishery, how many go to the banks 
of Newfoundland, or the coast of Labrador, the 
Straits of Belle Isle or the Bay of Chaleurs 
(Shalore the sailors call it) ; as if I were to 
reckon up the number of boys in Concord who 
are engaged during the summer in the perch, 
pickerel, bream, hornpout, and shiner fishery, 
of which no one keeps the statistics, — though 



212 CAPE COD 

I think that it is pursued with as much profit to 
the moral and intellectual man (or boy), and 
certainly with less danger to the physical one. 

One of my playmates, who was apprenticed 
to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked 
his master one afternoon if he might go a-fishing, 
and his master consented. He was gone three 
months. When he came back, he said that he 
had been to the Grand Banks, and went to setting 
type again as if only an afternoon had intervened. 

I confess I was surprised to find that so many 
men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives 
almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a seri- 
ous business men make of getting their dinners, 
and how universally shiftlessness and a grovelling 
taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. 
Better go without your dinner, I thought, than 
be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormo- 
rant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pur- 
suits in the country appear not a whit less 
frivolous. 

I once sailed three miles on a mackerel cruise 
myself. It was a Sunday evening after a very 
warm day in which there had been frequent 
thunder-showers, and I had walked along the 
shore from Cohasset to Duxbury. I wished to 
get over from the last place to Clark's Island, 
but no boat could stir, they said, at that stage of 
the tide, they being left high on the mud. At 
length I learned that the tavern-keeper, Winsor, 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 213 

was going out mackerelling with seven men that 
evening, and would take me. When there had 
been due delay, we one after another straggled 
down to the shore in a leisurely manner, as if 
waiting for the tide still, and in India-rubber 
boots, or carrying our shoes in our hands, waded 
to the boats, each of the crew bearing an armful 
of wood, and one a bucket of new potatoes be- 
sides. Then they resolved that each should 
bring one more armful of wood, and that would 
be enough. They had already got a barrel of 
water, and had some more in the schooner. 
We shoved the boats a dozen rods over the mud 
and water till they floated, then rowing half a 
mile to the vessel climbed aboard, and there we 
were in a mackerel schooner, a fine stout vessel 
of forty-three tons, whose name I forget. The 
baits were not dry on the hooks. There was the 
mill in which they ground the mackerel, and the 
trough to hold it, and the long-handled dipper 
to cast it overboard with; and already in the 
harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools 
of small mackerel, the real Scomber vernalis. 
The crew proceeded leisurely to weigh anchor 
and raise their two sails, there being a fair but 
very slight wind ; — and the sun now setting 
clear and shining on the vessel after the thunder- 
showers, I thought that I could not have com- 
menced the voyage under more favorable aus- 
pices. They had four dories and commonly 



214 CAPE COD 

fished in them, else they fished on the starboard 
side aft where their fines hung ready, two to a 
man. The boom swung round once or twice, 
and Winsor cast overboard the foul juice of 
mackerel mixed with rain-water which remained 
in his trough, and then we gathered about the 
helmsman and told stories. I remember that 
the compass was afi'ected by iron in its neighbor- 
hood and varied a few degrees. There was one 
amonir us iust returned from California, who 
was now iroino: as passens^er for his health and 
amusement. They expected to be gone about a 
week, to beirin fishino; the next mornincr, and to 
carrv' their fish fresh to Boston. Thev landed 
me at Clark's Island, where the Pilgrims landed, 
for my companions wished to get some milk for 
the vovase. But I had seen the whole of it. The 
rest was onlv croincr to sea and catchinoj the mack- 
erel. Moreover, it was as well that I did not 
remain with them, considering the small quan- 
tity of supplies they had taken. 

Now I saw the mackerel fleet on its fisJiing- 
ground, though I was not at first aware of it. 
So my experience was complete. 

It was even more cold and windy to-day than 
before, and we were frequently glad to take 
shelter behind a sand-hill. None of the elements 
were restinsr. On the beach there is a ceaseless 
activitv, alwavs somethino- iioino; on, in storm and 
in calm, winter and summer, night and day. 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 215 

Even the sedentary man here enjoys a breadth 
of view which is almost equivalent to motion. 
In clear weather the laziest may look across the 
Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the 
Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely 
raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look 
after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless 
dash and roar of the breakers. The restless 
ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a 
wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in 
the world, the most rapid stenographers, could 
not report the news it brings. No creature could 
move slowlv where there was so much life around. 
The few wreckers were either going or coming, 
and the ships and the sand-pipers, and the 
screaming gulls overhead ; nothing stood still 
but the shore. The little beach-birds trotted 
past close to the water's edge, or paused but an 
instant to swallow their food, keeping time with 
the elements. I wondered how they ever got 
used to the sea, that they ventured so near the 
waves. Such tiny inhabitants the land brought 
forth ! except one fox. And what could a fox 
do, looking on the Atlantic from that high bank ? 
What is the sea to a fox ? Sometimes we met a 
wrecker with his cart and dog, — and his dog's 
faint bark at us wayfarers, heard through the 
roaring of the surf, sounded ridiculously faint. 
To see a little trembling dainty-footed cur stand 
on the margin of the ocean, and ineffectually 



§16 CAPE COD 

bark at a beacli-bird. amid the roar of the At- 
lantic I Come with desifrn to bark at a whale, 
perchance I That sound will do for farmyards. 
All the dogs looked out of place there, naked 
and as if shudderinoj at the vastness: and I 
thouirht that thev would not have been there 
had it not been for the countenance of their 
masters. Still less could vou think of a cat bend- 

• 

ing her steps that way. and shaking her wet foot 
over the Atlantic; yet even this happens some- 
times, thev tell me. In summer I saw the tender 
voung of the Piping Plover, like chickens just 
hatched, mere pinches of down on two legs, 
running in troops, with a faint peep, along tli^ 
edge of the waves. T used to see packs of half- 
wild doers hauntino: the lonelv beach on the south 
shore of Staten Island, in New York Bav. for 
the sake of the carrion there cast up : and I re- 
member that once, when for a long time I had 
heard a furious barkinij in the tall cvrass of the 
marsh, a pack of half a dozen large dogs burst 
forth on to the beach, pursuing a little one which 
ran straight to me for protection, and I atTorded 
it with some stones, thoujirli at some risk to mv- 
self ; but the next day the little one was the first 
to bark at me. I'nder these circumstances I 
could not but remember the words of the poet : — 

"Blow. blow, thou winter wind. 
Thou .irt not sio unkind 
As hi^ ingratitude; " 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 117 

Thy tootli is not so keen. 
Pocauso tluni art not seen. 

Although tiiy breath l>e rude. 

"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky. 
Thou dost not bite so nigh 

As IxMiofits forgvtt ; 
Though thou the waters warp. 
Thy sting is not so sliarp 

As friend remembered not." 

Sometimes, when I \Yas approaching the car- 
cass of a horse or ox which hiv on the beach 

4 

there, where there was no hving creatnre in sight, 
a dog wouKi unexpectedly emerge from it and 
slink awav with a mouthful of otfal. 

ft 

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral OTOund, a most 
advantageous point from which to contemplate 
this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves 
forever rollino- to the land are too far-travelled 
and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along 
the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the 
foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product 
of sea-slime. 

It is a wild, rank place, and there is no flattery 
in it. Strewn with crabs, horse-shoes, and razor- 
clams, and whatever the sea casts up, — a vast 
morgue, where famished dogs may range in packs, 
and crows come daily to glean the pittance which 
the tide leaves them. The carcasses of men and 
beasts together lie stately up upon its shelf, rot- 
tins: and bleachina: in the sun and waves, and 



218 CAPE COD 

each tide turns them in their beds, and tucks 
fresh siind under them. There is naked Nature, 
inhumanly sincere, wastino; no thouirht on man, 
nibbHuir at the chtTv shore where irulls wheel 
amid the spray. 

We saw this forenoon what, at a distance, 
looked like a bleached loo; with a branch still 
left on it. It proved to be one of the principal 
bones of a whale, whose carcass, haviufr been 
stripped of blubber at sea and cut adrift, had 
been washed up some months before. It chanced 
that this was the most conclusive e%'idence which 
we met with to prove, what the Copenhagen anti- 
quaries assert, that these shores were the Fur- 
dustrandas which Thoriiall. the companion of 
Thorlinn during his expedition to Vinland in 
1007. sailed past in disgust. It appears that after 
they had left the Cape and explored the countn- 
about Straum-Fiordr (^Buzzards' Bay I). Thor- 
hall, who was disappointed at not getting any 
wine to drink there, determined to sail north 
asrain in search of Vinland. Thouijh the anti- 
quaries have given us the original Icelandic. I 
prefer to quote their translation, since theirs is 
the onlv Latin which I know to have been aimed 
at Cape Cod. 

*"Cum p.irati erant. sublato 
velo. cecinit Thorhallus: 
Ex> redeamus. ubi conterranei 
sunt nostri I faciamus alHer. 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 219 

expansi arenosi pcritiim, 
lata navis explorare curricula : 
diim prcx^llam incitantes gladii 
mon*" impatientes. qui terram 
collaudant. Furdustrandas 
inhabitant et coquunt balaenas." 

In other words: "When thev were readv and 
their sail hoisted. Tliorhall sanfj: Let us return 
thither where our feUow-eountrvmen are. Let 
us make a bird ' skilful to flv throuo-h the heaven 
of sand,- to explore the broad track of ships; 
while warriors who impel to the tempest of 
swords,^ who praise the land, inhabit Wonder- 
Strands, and cook wJialcs.'" And so he sailed 
north past Cape Cod. as the antiquaries say, 
"and was shipwrecked on to Ireland." 

Though once there were more whales cast up 
here, I think that it was never more wild than 
now. We do not associate the idea of antiquity 
with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a 
thousand vears acjo, as we do of the land, for 
it was equally wild and unfathomable always. 
The Indians have left no traces on its surface, 
but it is the same to the ci\'ilized man and the 
savage. The aspect of the shore only has 
chancred. The ocean is a wilderness reachins: 
round tlie globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, 

* 7. f. a vessel. 

' The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a 
heaven. 
' Battle. 



220 CAPE COD 

and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves 
of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side 
residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers, rap- 
idly vanish as civilization advances, but the 
most populous and civilized city cannot scare a 
shark far from its wharves. It is no further ad- 
vanced than Singapore, with its tigers, in this 
respect. The Boston papers had never told me 
that there were seals in the harbor. I had al- 
ways associated these with the Esquimaux and 
other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor 
windows all along the coast you may see families 
of them sporting on the flats. They were as 
strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies 
who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. 
To go to sea ! Why, it is to have the experience 
of Noah, — to realize the deluge. Every vessel 
is an ark. 

We saw no fences as we walked the beach, no 
birchen riders, highest of rails, projecting into 
the sea to keep the cows from wading round, 
nothing to remind us that man was proprietor of 
the shore. Yet a Truro man did tell us that 
owners of land on the east side of that town were 
regarded as owning the beach, in order that they 
might have the control of it so far as to defend 
themselves against the encroachments of the 
sand and the beach-grass, — for even this friend 
is sometimes regarded as a foe ; but he said that 
this was not the case on the Bay side. Also I 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 221 

have seen in sheltered parts of the Bay tempo- 
rary fences running to low-water mark, the posts 
being set in sills or sleepers placed transversely. 

After we had been walking many hours, the 
mackerel fleet still hovered in the northern hori- 
zon nearly in the same direction, but farther off, 
hull down. Though their sails were set they 
never sailed away, nor yet came to anchor, but 
stood on various tacks as close together as vessels 
in a haven, and we in our ignorance thought 
that they were contending patiently with adverse 
winds, beating eastward; but we learned after- 
ward that they were even then on their fishing- 
ground, and that they caught mackerel without 
taking in their mainsails or coming to anchor, 
"a smart breeze" (thence called a mackerel 
breeze) '* being," as one says, "considered most 
favorable" for this purpose. We counted about 
two hundred sail of mackerel fishers within one 
small arc of the horizon, and a nearly equal 
number had disappeared southward. Thus 
they hovered about the extremity of the Cape, 
like moths round a candle; the lights at Race 
Point and Long Point being bright candles for 
them at night, — and at this distance they looked 
fair and white, as if they had not yet flown into 
the light, but nearer at hand afterward, we saw 
how some had formerly singed their wings and 
bodies. 

A village seems thus, where its able-bodied 



222 CAPE COD 

men are all ploughing the ocean together, as a 
common field. In North Truro the women and 
girls may sit at their doors, and see where their 
husbands and brothers are harvesting their mack- 
erel fifteen or twenty miles oft', on the sea, with 
hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the 
country the farmers' wives sometimes see their 
husbands working in a distant hillside field. 
But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the 
fisher's ear. 

Having passed the narrowest part of the waist 
of the Cape, though still in Truro, for this town- 
ship is about twelve miles long on the shore, we 
crossed over to the Bay side, not half a mile dis- 
tant, in order to spend the noon on the nearest 
shrubby sand-hill in Provincetown, called Mount 
Ararat, which rises one hundred feet above the 
ocean. On our way thither w^e had occasion to 
admire the various beautiful forms and colors 
of the sand, and we noticed an interesting mirage, 
w^hich I have since found that Hitchcock also 
observed on the sands of the Cape. We were 
crossing a shallow valley in the Desert, where the 
smooth and spotless sand sloped upward by a 
small angle to the horizon on every side, and at 
the lowest part was a long chain of clear but 
shallow pools. As we were approaching these 
for a drink in a diagonal direction across the 
valley, they appeared inclined at a slight but de- 
cided angle to the horizon, though they were 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 223 

plainly and broadly connected with one another, 
and there was not the least ripple to suggest a 
current; so that by the time we had reached a 
convenient part of one we seemed to have as- 
cended several feet. They appeared to lie by 
magic on the side of the vale, like a mirror left 
in a slanting position. It was a very pretty 
mirage for a Provincetown desert, but not 
amounting to what, in Sanscrit, is called "the 
thirst of the gazelle," as there was real water 
here for a base, and we were able to quench our 
thirst after all. 

Professor Rafn, of Copenhagen, thinks that 
the mirage which I noticed, but which an old 
inhabitant of Provincetown, to whom I men- 
tioned it, had never seen nor heard of, had some- 
thing to do with the name "Furdustrandas," 
i. e. Wonder-Strands, given, as I have said, in 
the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn's expedi- 
tion to Vinland in the year 1007, to a part of the 
coast on which he landed. But these sands are 
more remarkable for their length than for their 
mirage, which is common to all deserts, and the 
reason for the name which the Northmen them- 
selves give, — "because it took a long time to 
sail by them," — is sufficient and more appli- 
cable to these shores. However, if you should 
sail all the way from Greenland to Buzzards' 
Bay along the coast, you would get sight of a 
good many sandy beaches. But whether Thor- 



224 CAPE COD 

finn saw the mirage here or not, Thor-eau, one 
of the same family, did; and perchance it was 
because Lief the Lucky had, in a previous voy- 
age, taken Thor-er and his people off the rock 
in the middle of the sea, that Thor-eau was born 
to see it. 

This was not the only mirage which I saw on 
the Cape. That half of the beach next the bank 
is commonly level, or nearly so, while the other 
slopes downward to the water. As I was walk- 
ing upon the edge of the bank in Wellfleet at 
sundown, it seemed to me that the inside half of 
the beach sloped upward toward the water to 
meet the other, forming a ridge ten or twelve 
feet high the whole length of the shore, but 
higher always opposite to where I stood; and I 
was not convinced of the contrary till I de- 
scended the bank, though the shaded outlines 
left by the waves of a previous tide but half-way 
down the apparent declivity might have taught 
me better. A stranger may easily detect what is 
strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange 
is his province. The old oysterman, speaking 
of gull-shooting, had said that you must aim un- 
der, when firing down the bank. 

A neighbor tells me that one August, looking 
through a glass from Naushon to some vessels 
which were sailing along near Martha's Vine- 
yard, the water about them appeared perfectly 
smooth, so that they were reflected in it, and yet 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 225 

their full sails proved that it must be rippled, 
and they who were with him thought that it was 
mirage, i. e. a reflection from a haze. 

From the above-mentioned sand-hill we over- 
looked Provincetown and its harbor, now emp- 
tied of vessels, and also a wide expanse of ocean. 
As we did not wish to enter Provincetown before 
night, though it was cold and windy, we returned 
across the Deserts to the Atlantic side, and 
walked along the beach again nearly to Race 
Point, being still greedy of the sea influence. All 
the while it was not so calm as the reader may 
suppose, but it was blow, blow, blow, — roar, 
roar, roar, — tramp, tramp, tramp, — without 
interruption. The shore now trended nearly 
east and west. 

Before sunset, having already seen the mack- 
erel fleet returning into the Bay, we left the sea- 
shore on the north of Provincetown, and made 
our way across the Desert to the eastern ex- 
tremity of the town. From the first high sand- 
hill, covered with beach-grass and bushes to its 
top, on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the 
shrubby hill and swamp country which sur- 
rounds Provincetown on the north, and protects 
it, in some measure, from the invading sand. 
Notwithstanding the universal barrenness, and 
the contiguity of the desert, I never saw an au- 
tumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this 
was. It was like the richest rug imaginable 

15 



226 CAPE COD 

spread over an uneven surface; no damask nor 
velvet, nor Tvrian dve or stuli's, nor tlie work of 
any loom, could ever match it. There was tlie 
incredibly briirht i*ed of the Huckleberrv, and 
the ivddish brown of the Bavberrv, niinirled with 
the briojht and livinj;:: ^rreen of small Pitch-Pines, 
and also the duller o-i^een of the Bavberrv, Box- 
berrv, and Plum, the vellowish o-reen of the 
Shrub-oaks, and the various ijolden and vellow 
and fawn-colored tints of the Birch and ^laple 
and Asj->en. — each making its own tigure. and, 
in the midst, the few vellow sand-slides on the 
sides of the hills looked like the white floor seen 
throuirh i*ents in the ruij. Comino: from the 
countrv as I did, and manv autumnal woods as 
I had seen, this was perhaps the most novel and 
remarkable sight that I saw on the Cape. Prob- 
ablv the briijhtness of the tints was enhanced bv 
contrast with the sand which surrounded this 
tract. This was a part of the furniture of Cape 
Cod. We had for days walked up the long and 
bleak piazza which runs along her Atlantic side, 
then over the sanded floor of her halls, and now 
we were beina: introduced into her boudoir. The 
hundred white sails crowdinor round Lon^; Point 
into Provincetown Harbor, seen over the painted 
hills in front, looked like toy ships upon a 
mantel-piece. 

The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape 
consisted in the lowness and thickness of the 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 227 

shrubbery, no less than in the brightness of the 
tints. It was like a thick stuff of worsted or a 
fleece, and looked as if a giant could take it up 
by the hem, or rather the tasselled fringe which 
trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it 
needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the dust 
would fly in that case, for not a little has ac- 
cumulated underneath it. Was it not such an 
autumnal landscape as this which suggested our 
high-colored rugs and carpets ? Hereafter when 
I look on a richer rug than usual, and study its 
figures, I shall think, there are the huckleberry 
hills, and there the denser swamps of boxberry 
and blueberry : there the shrub-oak patches and 
the bayberries, there the maples and the birches 
and the pines. What other dyes are to be com- 
pared to these ? They were warmer colors than 
I had associated with the New England coast. 

After threading a swamp full of boxberry, and 
climbing several hills covered with shrub-oaks, 
without a path, where shipwrecked men would 
be in danger of perishing in the night, we came 
down upon the eastern extremity of the four 
planks which run the whole length of Province- 
town street. This, which is the last town on the 
Cape, lies mainly in one street along the curving 
beach fronting the southeast. The sand-hills, 
covered with shrubbery and interposed with 
swamps and ponds, rose immediately behind it 
in the form of a crescent, which is from half a 



228 CAPE COD 

mile to a mile or more wide in the middle, and 
beyond these is the desert, which is the greater 
part of its territory, stretching to the sea on the 
east and west and north. The town is com- 
pactly built in the narrow space, from ten to 
fifty rods deep, between the harbor and the sand- 
hills, and contained at that time about twenty- 
six hundred inhabitants. The houses, in which 
a more modern and pretending style has at length 
prevailed over the fisherman's hut, stand on the 
inner or plank side of the street, and the fish and 
store houses, with the picturesque-looking wind- 
mills of the Salt-works, on the water side. The 
narrow portion of the beach between, forming the 
street, about eighteen feet wide, the only one 
where one carriage could pass another, if there 
was more than one carriage in the town, looked 
much "heavier" than any portion of the beach 
or the desert which we had walked on, it being 
above the reach of the highest tide, and the sand 
being kept loose by the occasional passage of a 
traveller. We learned that the four planks on 
which we were walking had been bought by the 
town's share of the Surplus Revenue, the dis- 
position of which was a bone of contention be- 
tween the inhabitants, till they wisely resolved 
thus to put it under foot. Yet some, it was said, 
were so provoked because they did not receive 
their particular share in money, that they per- 
sisted in walking in the sand a long time after 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 229 

the sidewalk was built. This is the only instance 
which I happen to know in which the surplus 
revenue proved a blessing to any town. A sur- 
plus revenue of dollars from the treasury to stem 
the greater evil of a surplus revenue of sand from 
the ocean. They expected to make a hard road 
by the time these planks were worn out. Indeed, 
they have already done so since we were there, 
and have almost forgotten their sandy baptism. 

As we passed along we observed the inhabi- 
tants engaged in curing either fish or the coarse 
salt hay which they had brought home and 
spread on the beach before their doors, looking 
as yellow as if they had raked it out of the sea. 
The front-yard plots appeared like what indeed 
they were, portions of the beach fenced in, with 
Beach-grass growing in them, as if they were 
sometimes covered by the tide. You might still 
pick up shells and pebbles there. There were a 
few trees among the houses, especially silver 
abeles, willows, and balm-of-Gileads ; and one 
man showed me a young oak which he had trans- 
planted from behind the town, thinking it an 
apple-tree. But every man to his trade. Though 
he had little woodcraft, he was not the less 
weatherwise, and gave us one piece of informa- 
tion; viz., he had observed that when a thunder- 
cloud came up with a flood-tide it did not rain. 
This was the most completely maritime town 
that we were ever in. It was merely a good 



230 CAPE COD 

harbor, surrounded by land dry, if not firm, — 
an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured 
and stored their fish, without any back country. 
When ashore the inhabitants still walk on planks. 
A few small patches have been reclaimed from 
the swamps, containing commonly half a dozen 
square rods only each. We saw one which was 
fenced with four lengths of rail ; also a fence 
made wholly of hogshead-staves stuck in the 
ground. These, and such as these, were all the 
cultivated and cultivable land in Provincetown. 
We were told that there were thirty or forty 
acres in all, but we did not discover a quarter 
part so much, and that was well dusted with 
sand, and looked as if the desert was claiming 
it. They are now turning some of their swamps 
into Cranberry Meadows on quite an extensive 
scale. 

Yet far from being out of the way. Province- 
town is directly in the way of the navigator, and 
he is lucky who does not run afoul of it in the 
dark. It is situated on one of the highways of 
commerce, and men from all parts of the globe 
touch there in the course of a year. 

The mackerel fleet had nearly all got in before 
us, it being Saturday night, excepting that divi- 
sion which had stood down towards Chatham 
in the morning ; and from a hill where we went 
to see the sun set in the Bay we counted two hun- 
dred goodly looking schooners at anchor in the 



I 

I 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 231 

harbor at various distances from the shore, and 
more were yet coming round the Cape. As each 
came to anchor, it took in sail and swung round 
in the wind, and kiwered its boat. They be- 
kmged chiefly to Wcllfleet, Truro, and Cape Ann. 
This wa^ji that city of canvas which we had seen 
hull down in the horizon. Near at hand, and 
under bare poles, they were unexpectedly black- 
lookine: vessels, fieXaivai i^^ev. A fisherman told 
us that there were fifteen hundred vessels in the 
mackerel fleet, and that he had counted three 
hundred and fiftv in Provincetown Harbor at 
one time. Beiuix obliaied to anchor at a consider- 
able distance from the shore on account of the 
shallowness of the water, thev made the im- 
pression of a larger fleet than the vessels at the 
wharves of a large citv. As thev had been ma- 
na?uvrin<]: out there aJl dav seeminglv for our 
entertainment, while we were walking north- 
westward along the Atlantic, so now we found 
them flockincj into Provincetown Harbor at 
night, just as we arrived, as if to meet us, and 
exhibit themselves close at hand. Standing by 
Race Point and Long Point with various speed, 
thev reminded me of fowls coming home to 
roost. 

These were genuine New England vessels. It 
is stated in the Journal of Moses Prince, a brother 
of the annalist, under date of 17'-21, at which time 
he visited Gloucester, that the first vessel of the 



232 CAPE COD 

class called schooner was built at Gloucester 
about eight years before, by Andrew Robinson ; 
and late in the same century one Cotton Tufts 
gives us the tradition with some particulars, 
which he learned on a visit to the same place. 
According to the latter, Robinson having con- 
structed a vessel which he masted and rigged in 
a peculiar manner, on her going off the stocks a 
bystander cried out, "O, how she scoons!'' 
whereat Robinson replied, "A schooner let her 
he!" "From which time," says Tufts, "vessels 
thus masted and rigged have gone by the name 
of schooners; before which, vessels of this de- 
scription were not known in Europe." (See 
Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. IX., 1st Series, and Vol. I., 
4th Series.) Yet I can hardly believe this, for a 
schooner has always seemed to me — the typical 
vessel. 

According to C. E. Potter of Manchester, New 
Hampshire, the very word schooner is of New 
England origin, being from the Indian schoon 
or scoot, meaning to rush, as Schoodic, from 
scoot and anke, a place where water rushes. 
N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to read a 
paper on this matter before a genealogical society, 
in Boston, March 3, 1859, according to the 
Boston Journal, q. v. 

Nearly all who come out must walk on the 
four planks which I have mentioned, so that you 
are pretty sure to meet all the inhabitants of 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 233 

Provincetown who come out in the course of a 
day, provided you keep out yourself. This even- 
ing the planks were crowded with mackerel 
fishers, to whom we gave and from whom we 
took the wall, as we returned to our hotel. This 
hotel was kept by a tailor, his shop on the one 
side of the door, his hotel on the other, and his 
day seemed to be divided between carving meat 
and carving broadcloth. 

The next morning, though it was still more 
cold and blustering than the day before, we took 
to the Deserts agaiii, for we spent our days wholly 
out of doors, in the sun when there was any, and 
in the wind which never failed. After threading 
the shrubby hill country at the southwest end of 
the town, west of the Shank-Painter Swamp, 
whose expressive name — for we understood it 
at first as a landsman naturally would — gave it 
importance in our eyes, we crossed the sands to 
the shore south of Race Point and three miles dis- 
tant, and thence roamed round eastward through 
the desert to where we had left the sea the evening 
before. We travelled five or six miles after we 
got out there, on a curving line, and might have 
gone nine or ten, over vast platters of pure sand, 
from the midst of which we could not see a par- 
ticle of vegetation, excepting the distant thin 
fields of Beach-grass, which crowned and made 
the ridges toward which the sand sloped upward 
on each side ; — all the while in the face of a 



234 CAPE COD 

cutting wind as cold as January; indeed, we 
experienced no weather so cold as this for nearly 
two months afterward. This desert extends 
from the extremity of the Cape, through Prov- 
incetown into Truro, and many a time as we 
were traversing it we were reminded of "Riley's 
Narrative" of his captivity in the sands of Ara- 
bia, notwithstanding the cold. Our eyes mag- 
nified the patches of Beach-grass into cornfields 
in the horizon, and we probably exaggerated the 
height of the ridges on account of the mirage. 
I was pleased to learn afterward, from Kalm's 
Travels in North America, that the inhabitants 
of the Lower St. Lawrence call this grass {Cal- 
amagrostis arenaria), and also Sea-lyme grass 
(Elymus arenarius), seigle de mer; and he adds, 
"I have been assured that these plants grow in 
great plenty in Newfoundland, and on other 
North American shores ; the places covered with 
them looking, at a distance, like cornfields; 
which might explain the passage in our northern 
accounts [he wrote in 1749] of the excellent wine 
land [Vinland det goda. Translator], which men- 
tions that they had found whole fields of wheat 
growing wild." 

The Beach-grass is "two to four feet high, of 
a seagreen color," and it is said to be widely 
diffused over the world. In the Hebrides it is 
used for mats, pack-saddles, bags, hats, etc. ; 
paper has been made of it at Dorchester in this 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 235 

State, and cattle eat it when tender. It has heads 
somewhat like rye, from six inches to a foot in 
length, and it is propagated both by roots and 
seeds. To express its love for sand, some botan- 
ists have called it Psamma arenaria, which is the 
Greek for sand, qualified by the Latin for sandy, 
— or sandy sand. As it is blown about by the 
wind, while it is held fast by its roots, it describes 
myriad circles in the sand as accurately as if they 
were made by compasses. 

It was the dreariest scenery imaginable. The 
only animals which we saw on the sand at that 
time were spiders, which are to be found almost 
everywhere whether on snow or ice-water or 
sand, — and a venomous-looking, long, narrow 
worm, one of the myriapods, or thousand-legs. 
We were surprised to see spider-holes in that 
flowing sand with an edge as firm as that of a 
stoned well. 

In June this sand was scored with the tracks 
of turtles both large and small, which had been 
out in the night, leading to and from the swamps. 
I was told by a terrce filius who has a "farm" on 
the edge of the desert, and is familiar with the 
fame of Provincetown, that one man had caught 
twenty-five snapping-turtles there the previous 
spring. His own method of catching them was 
to put a toad on a mackerel-hook and cast it into 
a pond, tying the line to a stump or stake 
on shore. Invariably the turtle when hooked 



236 CAPE COD 

crawled up the line to the stump, and was found 
waiting there by his captor, however long after- 
ward. He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes, 
coons, and wild mice were found there, but no 
squirrels. We heard of sea- turtle as large as a 
barrel being found on the beach and on East 
Harbor marsh, but whether they were native 
there, or had been lost out of some vessel, did not 
appear. Perhaps they were the Salt-water Ter- 
rapin, or else the Smooth Terrapin, found thus 
far north. Many toads were met with where 
there was nothing but sand and beach-grass. In 
Truro I had been surprised at the number of 
large light-colored toads everywhere hopping 
over the dry and sandy fields, their color corre- 
sponding to that of the sand. Snakes also are 
common on these pure sand beaches, and I have 
never been so much troubled by mosquitoes as 
in such localities. At the same season straw- 
berries grew there abundantly in the little hol- 
lows on the edge of the desert standing amid the 
beach-grass in the sand, and the fruit of the shad- 
bush or Amelanchier, which the inhabitants call 
Josh-pears (some think from juicy .'^), is very 
abundant on the hills. I fell in with an obliging 
man who conducted me to the best locality for 
strawberries. He said that he would not have 
shown me the place if he had not seen that I was 
a stranger, and could not anticipate him another 
year; I therefore feel bound in honor not to re- 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 237 

veal it. When we came to a pond, he being the 
native did the honors and carried me over on 
his shoulders, like Sindbad. One good turn de- 
serves another, and if he ever comes our way I 
will do as much for him. 

In one place we saw numerous dead tops of 
trees projecting through the otherwise uninter- 
rupted desert, where, as we afterward learned, 
thirty or forty years before a flourishing forest 
had stood, and now, as the trees were laid bare 
from year to year, the inhabitants cut off their 
tops for fuel. 

We saw nobody that day outside of the town ; 
it was too wintry for such as had seen the Back- 
side before, or for the greater number who never 
desire to see it, to venture out; and we saw 
hardly a track to show that any had ever crossed 
this desert. Yet I was told that some are always 
out on the Back-side night and day in severe 
weather, looking for wrecks, in order that they 
may get the job of discharging the cargo, or the 
like, — and thus shipwrecked men are succored. 
But, generally speaking, the inhabitants rarely 
visit these sands. One who had lived in Prov- 
incetown thirty years told me that he had not 
been through to the north side within that time. 
Sometimes the natives themselves come near 
perishing by losing their way in snow-storms 
behind the town. 

The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such 



238 CAPE COD 

as we associate with the desert, but a New Eng- 
land northeaster, — and we sought shelter in 
vain under the sand-hills, for it blew all about 
them, rounding them into cones, and was sure 
to find us out on whichever side we sat. From 
time to time we lay down and drank at little pools 
in the sand, filled with pure fresh water, all that 
was left, probably, of a pond or swamp. The 
air was filled with dust like snow, and cutting 
sand which made the face tingle, and we saw 
what it must be to face it when the weather was 
drier, and, if possible, windier still, — to face a 
migrating sand-bar in the air, which has picked 
up its duds and is off, — to be whipped with a 
cat, not o' nine-tails, but of a myriad of tails, and 
each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whitman, a former 
minister of Wellfleet, used to write to his inland 
friends that the blowing sand scratched the win- 
dows so that he was obliged to have one new 
pane set every week, that he might see out. 

On the edge of the shrubby woods the sand 
had the appearance of an inundation which was 
overwhelming them, terminating in an abrupt 
bank many feet higher than the surface on which 
they stood, and having partially buried the out- 
side trees. The moving sand-hills of England, 
called Dunes or Downs, to which these have been 
likened, are either formed of sand cast up by the 
sea, or of sand taken from the land itself in the 
first place by the wind, and driven still farther 



■TmC- 



<f~^" 









'M 
} 



S 
-I 



tmH 



i 



i 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 239 

inward. It is here a tide of sand impelled by 
waves and wind, slowly flowing from the sea 
toward the town. The northeast winds are said 
to be the strongest, but the northwest to move 
most sand, because they are the driest. On the 
shore of the Bay of Biscay many villages were 
formerly destroyed in this way. Some of the 
ridges of beach-grass which we saw were planted 
by government many years ago, to preserve the 
harbor of Provincetown and the extremity of the 
Cape. I talked with some who had been em- 
ployed in the planting. In the "Description of 
the Eastern Coast," which I have already re- 
ferred to, it is said: "Beach-grass during the 
spring and summer grows about two feet and a 
half. If surrounded by naked beach, the storms 
of autumn and winter heap up the sand on all 
sides, and cause it to rise nearly to the top of the 
plant. In the ensuing spring the grass mounts 
anew ; is again covered with sand in the winter ; 
and thus a hill or ridge continues to ascend as 
long as there is a sufficient base to support it, 
or till the circumscribing sand, being also cov- 
ered with beach-grass, will no longer yield to 
the force of the winds." Sand-hills formed in 
this way are sometimes one hundred feet high 
and of every variety of form, like snow-drifts, or 
Arab tents, and are continually shifting. The 
grass roots itself very firmly. When I endeav- 
ored to pull it up, it usually broke off ten inches 



240 CAPE COD 

or a foot below the surface, at what had been the 
surface the year before, as appeared by the num- 
erous offshoots there, it being a straight, hard, 
round shoot, showing by its length how much 
the sand had accumulated the last year; and 
sometimes the dead stubs of a previous season 
were pulled up with it from still deeper in the 
sand, with their own more decayed shoot at- 
tached, — so that the age of a sand-hill, and its 
rate of increase for several years, is pretty accu- 
rately recorded in this way. 

Old Gerard, the English herbalist, says, p. 
1250: "I find mention in Stowe's Chronicle, in 
Anno 1555, of a certain pulse or pease, as they 
term it, wherewith the poor people at that time, 
there being a great dearth, were miraculously 
helped: he thus mentions it. In the month of 
August (saith he), in Suft'olke, at a place by the 
sea side all of hard stone and pibble, called in 
those parts a shelf, lying between the towns of 
Orford and iVldborough, where neither grew 
grass nor any earth was ever seen ; it chanced in 
this barren place suddenly to spring up without 
any tillage or sowing, great abundance of peason, 
whereof the poor gathered (as men judged) above 
one hundred quarters, yet remained some ripe 
and some blossoming, as many as ever there were 
before: to the which place rode the Bishop of 
Norwich and the Lord Willoughby, with others 
in great number, who found nothing but hard, 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 241 

rocky stone the space of three yards under the 
roots of these peason, which roots were great and 
long, and very sweet." He tells us also that 
Gesner learned from Dr. Cajus that there were 
enough there to supply thousands of men. He 
goes on to say that "they without doubt grew 
there many years before, but were not observed 
till hunger made them take notice of them, and 
quickened their invention, which commonly in 
our people is very dull, especially in finding out 
food of this nature. My worshipful friend Dr. 
Argent hath told me that many years ago he was 
in this place, and caused his man to pull among 
the beach with his hands, and follow the roots so 
long until he got some equal in length unto his 
height, yet could come to no ends of them." 
Gerard never saw them, and is not certain what 
kind they were. 

In Dwight's Travels in New England it is 
stated that the inhabitants of Truro were for- 
merly regularly warned under the authority of 
law in the month of April yearly, to plant beach- 
grass, as elsewhere they are warned to repair the 
highways. They dug up the grass in bunches, 
which were afterward divided into several smaller 
ones, and set about three feet apart, in rows, so 
arranged as to break joints and obstruct the 
passage of the wind. It spread itself rapidly, the 
weight of the seeds when ripe bending the heads 
of the grass, and so dropping directly by its side 

16 



242 CAPE COD 

and vegetating there. In this way, for instance, 
they built up again that part of the Cape between 
Truro and Provincetown where the sea broke 
over in the last century. They have now a pub- 
lic road near there, made by laying sods, which 
were full of roots, bottom upward and close to- 
gether on the sand, double in the middle of the 
track, then spreading brush evenly over the sand 
on each side for half a dozen feet, planting beach- 
grass on the banks in regular rows, as above de- 
scribed, and sticking a fence of brush against the 
hollows. 

The attention of the general government was 
first attracted to the danger which threatened 
Cape Cod Harbor from the inroads of the sand, 
about thirty years ago, and commissioners were 
at that time appointed by Massachusetts, to ex- 
amine the premises. They reported in June, 
1825, that, owing to "the trees and brush having 
been cut down, and the beach-grass destroyed 
on the seaward side of the Cape, opposite the 
Harbor," the original surface of the ground had 
been broken up and removed by the wind toward 
the Harbor, — during the previous fourteen 
years, — over an extent of "one half a mile in 
breadth, and about four and a half miles in 
length." — "The space where a few years since 
were some of the highest lands on the Cape, cov- 
ered with trees and bushes," presenting "an 
extensive waste of undulating sand " ; — and 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 243 

that, during the previous twelve months, the 
sand "had approached the Harbor an average 
distance of fifty rods, for an extent of four and a 
half miles!" and unless some measures were 
adopted to check its progress, it would in a few 
years destroy both the harbor and the town. 
They therefore recommended that beach-grass 
be set out on a curving line over a space ten rods 
wide and four and a half miles long, and that 
cattle, horses, and sheep be prohibited from 
going abroad, and the inhabitants from cutting 
the brush. 

I was told that about thirty thousand dollars 
in all had been appropriated to this object, though 
it was complained that a great part of this was 
spent foolishly, as the public money is wont to 
be. Some say that while the government is 
planting beach-grass behind the town for the 
protection of the harbor, the inhabitants are roll- 
ing the sand into the harbor in wheelbarrows, in 
order to make house-lots. The Patent-OflBce 
has recently imported the seed of this grass from 
Holland, and distributed it over the country, but 
probably we have as much as the Hollanders. 

Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, as 
it were, by a myriad little cables of beach-grass, 
and, if they should fail, would become a total 
wreck, and erelong go to the bottom. Formerly, 
the cows were permitted to go at large, and they 
ate many strands of the cable by which the Cape 



244 CAPE COD 

is moored, and well-nigh set it adrift, as the bull 
did the boat which was moored with a grass rope ; 
but now they are not permitted to wander. 

A portion of Truro which has considerable 
taxable property on it has lately been added to 
Provincetown, and I was told by a Truro man 
that his townsmen talked of petitioning the leg- 
islature to set off the next mile of their territory 
also to Provincetown, in order that she might 
have her share of the lean as well as the fat, and 
take care of the road through it; for its whole 
value is literally to hold the Cape together, and 
even this it has not always done. But Province- 
town strenuously declines the gift. 

The wind blowed so hard from the northeast 
that, cold as it was, we resolved to see the break- 
ers on the Atlantic side, whose din we had heard 
all the morning ; so we kept on eastward through 
the Desert, till we struck the shore again north- 
east of Provincetown, and exposed ourselves to 
the full force of the piercing blast. There are 
extensive shoals there over which the sea broke 
with great force. For half a mile from the shore 
it was one mass of white breakers, which, with 
the wind, made such a din that we could 
hardly hear ourselves speak. Of this part of the 
coast it is said: "A northeast storm, the most 
violent and fatal to seamen, as it is frequently 
accompanied with snow, blows directly on the 
land : a strong current sets along the shore ; add 




-^ 






5-. 



-Si 



r5> 



^ 

, 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 245 

to which that ships, during the operation of such 
a storm, endeavor to work northward, that they 
may get into the bay. Should they be unable to 
weather Race Point, the wind drives them on the 
shore, and a shipwreck is inevitable. Accord- 
ingly, the strand is everywhere covered with the 
fragments of vessels." But since the Highland 
Light was erected, this part of the coast is less 
dangerous, and it is said that more shipwrecks 
occur south of that light, where they were scarcely 
known before. 

This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed, 
— more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, 
than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a 
far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a 
clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which 
labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a 
harbor. It was high tide when we reached the 
shore, and in one place, for a considerable dis- 
tance, each wave dashed up so high that it was 
difficult to pass between it and the bank. Fur- 
ther south, where the bank was higher, it would 
have been dangerous to attempt it. A native of 
the Cape has told me that, many years ago, three 
boys, his playmates, having gone to this beach 
in Wellfleet to visit a wreck, when the sea receded 
ran down to the wreck, and when it came in ran 
before it to the bank, but the sea following fast 
at their heels, caused the bank to cave and bury 
them alive. 



246 CAPE COD 

It was the roaring sea, dakaaaa rj^n^traa^ — 

a/i,<pi oe T aKpaL 
Hioves fioooHTLv, epcvyo/Aci'?;? ctAos t^w- 

And the summits of the bank 
Around resound, the sea being vomited forth. 

As we stood looking on this scene we were 
gradually convinced that fishing here and in a 
pond were not, in all respects, the same, and that 
he who waits for fair weather and a calm sea 
may never see the glancing skin of a mackerel, 
and get no nearer to a cod than the wooden 
emblem in the State House. 

Having lingered on the shore till we were 
well-nigh chilled to death by the wind, and were 
ready to take shelter in a Charity-house, we 
turned our weather-beaten faces toward Prov- 
incetown and the Bay again, having now more 
than doubled the Cape. 



PROVINCETOWN 

EARLY the next morning I walked into a 
fish-house near our hotel, where three or 
four men were engaged in trundling out 
the pickled fish on barrows, and spreading them 
to dry. They told me that a vessel had lately 
come in from the Banks with forty-four thousand 
codfish. Timothy Dwight says that, just before 
he arrived at Provincetown, "a schooner come 
in from the Great Bank with fifty-six thousand 
fish, almost one thousand five hundred quintals, 
taken in a single voyage; the main deck being, 
on her return, eight inches under water in calm 
weather." The cod in this fish-house, just out 
of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and 
three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, 
pitching them on to the barrows with an instru- 
ment which had a single iron point. One young 
man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish re- 
peatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when that older 
man sees you he will speak to you. But pres- 
ently I saw the older man do the same thing. It 
reminded me of the figs of Smyrna. "How long 
does it take to cure these fish .^" I asked. 



248 CAPE COD 

*'Two good dn'ing days, sir," was the answer. 

I walked across the street again into the hotel 
to breakfast, and mine host inquired if I would 
take "hashed fish or beans." I took beans, 
though they never were a favorite dish of mine. 
I found next summer that this was still the only 
alternative proposed here, and the landlord was 
still ringing the changes on these two words. In 
the former dish there was a remarkable propor- 
tion of fish. As you travel inland the potato pre- 
dominates. It chanced that I did not taste fresh 
fish of any kind on the Cape, and I was assured 
that they were not so much used there as in the 
country-. That is where they are cured, and 
where, sometimes, travellers are cured of eating 
them. No fresh meat was slaughtered in Prov- 
incetown, but the little that was used at the 
public houses was brought from Boston by the 
steamer. 

A great many of the houses here were sur- 
rounded by fish-flakes close up to the sills on all 
sides, with only a narrow passage two or three 
feet wide, to the front door; so that instead of 
looking out into a flower or grass plot, you looked 
on to so many square rods of cod turned WTong 
side outwards. These parterres were said to be 
least like a flower-garden in a good dry-ing day 
in mid-summer. There were flakes of everv age 
and pattern, and some so rusty and overgrown 
with lichens that they looked as if they might 



-Sf*"^"'-rff^ir^j«^- 










PROVINCETOWN 249 

have served the founders of the fishery here. 
Some had broken down under the weight of suc- 
cessive harvests. The principal employment of 
the inhabitants at this time seemed to be to 
trundle out their fish and spread them in the 
morning, and bring them in at night. I saw how 
many a loafer who chanced to be out early enough 
got a job at wheeling out the fish of his neighbor 
who was anxious to improve the whole of a fair 
day. Now, then, I knew where salt fish were 
caught. Thev were everywhere Ivins: on their 
backs, their collar-bones standing out like the 
lapels of a man-o'-war-man's jacket, and invit- 
ing all things to come and rest in their bosoms; 
and all things, with a few exceptions, accepted 
the invitation. I think, by the way, that if you 
should wrap a large salt fish round a small boy, 
he would have a coat of such a fashion as I have 
seen many a one wear to muster. Salt fish were 
stacked up on the wharves, looking like corded 
wood, maple and yellow birch with the bark 
left on. I mistook them for this at first, and such 
in one sense they were, — fuel to maintain our 
vital fires, — an eastern wood which grew on the 
Grand Banks. Some were stacked in the form of 
huge flower-pots, being laid in small circles with 
the tails outwards, each circle successively larger 
than the preceding until the pile was three or four 
feet high, when the circles rapidly diminished, 
so as to form a conical roof. On the shores of 



^250 CAPE COD 

New Brunswick this is covered "VN'itli birch-bark, 
and stones are placed upon it, and being thus 
rendered imperv-ious to the rain, it is left to 
season before being packed for exportation. 

It is rumored that in the fall the cows here are 
sometimes fed on cod's-heads I The godlike part 
of the cod. which, like the human head, is curi- 
ously and wonderfully made, forsooth has but 
little less brain in it, — comino; to such an end I 
to be craunched bv cows I I felt mv own skull 
crack from sympathy. ^Yhat if the heads of men 
were to be cut olf to feed the cows of a superior 
order of bcinirs who inhabit the islands in the 
ether ? Awav iroes vour tine brain, the house of 
thoucrht and instinct, to swell the cud of a ru- 
minant animal I — However, an inhabitant as- 
sured me that they did not make a practice of 
feediuii cows on cod's-heads ; the cows raerelv 
would eat them sometimes ; but I mii^ht live 
there all mv davs and never see it done. A cow 
wanting salt would also sometimes lick out all the 
soft part of a cod on the flakes. This he would 
have me believe was the foundation of this lish- 
stors'. 

It has been a constant traveller's tale and per- 
haps slander, now for thousands of years, the 
Latins and Greeks have repeated it, that this or 
that nation feeds its cattle, or horses, or sheep, 
on fish, as mav be seen in G^lian and Plinv, but 
in the Journal of Xearchus, who was Alexander's 



PROVINCEIOWN 251 

admiral, and made a vovatro from the Indus to 
the Euphrates three hundred and twenty-six 
years before Christ, it is said that the inhabitants 
of a portion of the intermediate eoast, whom he 
caHed Ichthyophagi or Fish-eaters, not only ate 
fishes raw and also dried and pounded in a 
whak^'s vertebra for a mortar and made into a 
paste, but gave them to their eattle, there being 
no ijrass on the eoast; and several modern trav- 
ellers — Bravbosa, Niebuhr, and others — make 
tlie same report. Therefore in balaneing the 
evidence I am still in doubt about the Province- 
town cows. As for other domestic animals. 
Captain King in his continuation of Captain 
Cook's Journal in 1779, says of the dogs of 
Kamtschatka, "Their food in the winter con- 
sists entirelv of the heads, entrail, and back- 
bones of salmon, which are put aside and dried 
for that purpose; and with this diet they are 
fed but sparingly." (Cook's Journal, Vol. VII., 
p. 315.) 

As we are treatinii: of fishv matters, let me in- 
sert what Plinv savs, that "the commanders of 
the fleets of Alexander the Great have related 
that the Gedrosi, who dwell on the banks of the 
river Arabis, are in the habit of making the doors 
of their houses with the jaw-bones of fishes, and 
raftering the roofs with their bones." Strabo 
tells the same of the Ichthyophagi. "Ilardouin 
remarks that the Basques of his day were in the 



252 CAPE COD 

habit of fencing their gardens with the ribs of the 
whale, which sometimes exceeded twenty feet 
in length ; and Cuvier says that at the present 
time the jaw-bone of the whale is used in Nor- 
way for the purpose of making beams or posts 
for buildings." (Bohn's ed., trans, of Pliny, 
Vol. II., p. 361.) Herodotus says the inhabi- 
tants on Lake Prasias in Thrace (living on piles) 
"give fish for fodder to their horses and beasts 
of burden." 

Provincetown was apparently what is called a 
flourishing town. Some of the inhabitants asked 
me if I did not think that they appeared to be 
well off generally. I said that I did, and asked 
how many there were in the almshouse. *'0, 
only one or two, infirm or idiotic," answered 
they. The outward aspect of the houses and 
shops frequently suggested a poverty which their 
interior comfort and even richness disproved. 
You might meet a lady daintily dressed in the 
Sabbath morning, wading in among the sand- 
hills, from church, where there appeared no 
house fit to receive her, yet no doubt the interior 
of the house answered to the exterior of the lady. 
As for the interior of the inhabitants I am still 
in the dark about it. I had a little intercourse 
with some whom I met in the street, and was 
often agreeably disappointed by discovering the 
intelligence of rough, and what would be con- 
sidered unpromising specimens. Nay, I ven- 



PROVINCETOWN 253 

tured to call on one citizen the next summer, by 
special invitation. I found him sitting in his front 
doorway, that Sabbath evening, prepared for me 
to come in unto him ; but unfortunately for his 
reputation for keeping open house, there was 
stretched across his gateway a circular cobweb 
of the largest kind and quite entire. This looked 
so ominous that I actually turned aside and went 
in the back way. 

This Monday morning was beautifully mild 
and calm, both on land and water, promising us 
a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fisher- 
men feared that it would not be so good a drying 
day as the cold and windy one which preceded 
it. There could hardly have been a greater 
contrast. This was the first of the Indian sum- 
mer days, though at a late hour in the morning 
we found the wells in the sand behind the town 
still covered with ice, which had formed in the 
night. What with wind and sun my most prom- 
inent feature fairly cast its slough. But I assure 
you it will take more than two good drying days 
to cure me of rambling. After making an ex- 
cursion among the hills in the neighborhood of the 
Shank-Painter Swamp, and getting a little work 
done in its line, we took our seat upon the highest 
sand-hill overlooking the town, in mid-air, on a 
long plank stretched across between two hillocks 
of sand, where some boys were endeavoring in 
vain to fly their kite ; and there we remained the 



254 CAPE COD 

rest of that forenoon looking out over the placid 
harbor, and watching for the first appearance of 
the steamer from Wellfleet, that we might be in 
readiness to go on board when we heard the 
whistle off Long Point. 

We got what we could out of the boys in the 
meanwhile. Provincetown boys are of course all 
sailors and have sailors' eyes. When we were 
at the Highland Light the last summer, seven 
or eight miles from Provincetown Harbor, and 
wished to know one Sunday morning if the 
Olata, a well-known yacht, had got in from Bos- 
ton, so that we could return in her, a Province- 
town boy about ten years old, who chanced to 
be at the table, remarked that she had. I asked 
him how he knew. "I just saw her come in," 
said he. When I expressed surprise that he 
could distinguish her from other vessels so far, 
he said that there were not so many of those two- 
topsail schooners about but that he could tell 
her. Palfrey said, in his oration at Barnsta- 
ble, the duck does not take to the water with 
a surer instinct than the Barnstable boy. [He 
might have said the Cape Cod boy as well.] He 
leaps from his leading-strings into the shrouds, 
it is but a bound from the mother's lap to the 
masthead. He boxes the compass in his infant 
soliloquies. He can hand, reef, and steer by the 
time he flies a kite. 

This was the very day one would have chosen 



PROVINCETOWN ^55 

to sit upon a hill overlooking sea and land, and 
muse there. The mackerel fleet was rapidly tak- 
ing its departure, one schooner after another, and 
standing round the Cape, like fowls leaving their 
roosts in the morning to disperse themselves in 
distant fields. The turtle-like sheds of the salt- 
works were crowded into every nook in the hills, 
immediately behind the town, and their now 
idle windmills lined the shore. It was worth the 
while to see by what coarse and simple chemistry 
this almost necessary of life is obtained, with the 
sun for journeyman, and a single apprentice to 
do the chores for a large establishment. It is 
a sort of tropical labor, pursued too in the 
sunniest season; more interesting than gold or 
diamond-washing, which, I fancy, it somewhat 
resembles at a distance. In the production of 
the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to 
assist man. So at the potash works which I have 
seen at Hull, where they burn the stems of the 
kelp and boil the ashes. Verily, chemistry is 
not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a 
dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory. It is said, 
that owing to the reflection of the sun from the 
sand-hills, and there being absolutely no fresh 
water emptying into the harbor, the same num- 
ber of superficial feet yields more salt here than 
in any other part of the county. A little rain is 
considered necessary to clear the air, and make 
salt fast and good, for as paint does not dry, so 



256 CAPE COD 

water does not evaporate in dog-day weather. 
But they were now, as elsewhere on the Cape, 
breaking up their salt-works and selling them 
for lumber. 

From that elevation we could overlook the 
operations of the inhabitants almost as com- 
pletely as if the roofs had been taken off. They 
were busily covering the wicker-worked flakes 
about their houses with salted fish, and we now 
saw that the back yards were improved for this 
purpose as much as the front ; where one man's 
fish ended another's began. In almost every 
yard we detected some little building from which 
these treasures were being trundled forth and 
systematically spread, and we saw that there was 
an art as well as a knack even in spreading fish, 
and that a division of labor was profitably prac- 
tised. One man was withdrawing his fishes a 
few inches beyond the nose of his neighbor's 
cow which had stretched her neck over a paling 
to get at them. It seemed a quite domestic em- 
ployment, like drying clothes, and indeed in some 
parts of the county the women take part in it. 

I noticed in several places on the Cape a sort of 
clothes-^aA^e^. They spread brush on the ground, 
and fence it round, and then lay their clothes on 
it, to keep them from the sand. This is a Cape 
Cod clothes-yard. 

The sand is the great enemy here. The tops 
of some of the hills were enclosed and a board 



PROVINCETOWN 257 

put up, forbidding all persons entering the en- 
closure, lest their feet should disturb the sand, 
and set it a-blowing or a-sliding. The inhabi- 
tants are obliged to get leave from the authorities 
to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes, bean- 
poles, pea-brush, and the like, though, as we 
were told, they may transplant trees from one 
part of the township to another without leave. 
The sand drifts like snow, and sometimes the 
lower story of a house is concealed by it, though 
it is kept off by a wall. The houses were for- 
merly built on piles, in order that the driving 
sand might pass under them. We saw a few old 
ones here still standing on their piles, but they 
were boarded up now, being protected by their 
younger neighbors. There was a school-house, 
just under the hill on which we sat, filled with 
sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course 
the master and scholars had fled. Perhaps they 
had imprudently left the windows open one day, 
or neglected to mend a broken pane. Yet in 
one place was advertised "Fine sand for sale 
here," — I could hardly believe my eyes, — 
probably some of the street sifted, — a good in- 
stance of the fact that a man confers a value on 
the most worthless thing by mixing himself with 
it, according to which rule we must have con- 
ferred a value on the whole back-side of Cape 
Cod ; — but I thought that if they could have 

advertised *'Fat Soil," or perhaps "Fine sand 

17 



258 CAPE COD 

got rid of," ay, and *' Shoes emptied here," it 
would have been more alluring. As we looked 
down on the town, I thought that I saw one man, 
who probably lived beyond the extremity of the 
planking, steering and tacking for it in a sort of 
snow-shoes, but I may have been mistaken. In 
some pictures of Provincetown the persons of 
the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, 
so much being supposed to be buried in the sand. 
Nevertheless, natives of Provincetown assured 
me that they could walk in the middle of the road 
without trouble even in slippers, for they had 
learned how to put their feet down and lift them 
up without taking in any sand. One man said 
that he should be surprised if he found half a 
dozen grains of sand in his pumps at night, and 
stated, moreover, that the young ladies had a 
dexterous way of emptying their shoes at each 
step, which it would take a stranger a long time 
to learn. The tires of the stage- wheels were 
about five inches wide; and the wagon-tires 
generally on the Cape are an inch or two wider, 
as the sand is an inch or two deeper than else- 
where. I saw a baby's wagon with tires six 
inches wide to keep it near the surface. The 
more tired the wheels, the less tired the horses. 
Yet all the time that we were in Provincetown, 
which was two days and nights, we saw only one 
horse and cart, and they were conveying a coffin. 
They did not try such experiments there on 



PROVINCETOWN 259 

common occasions. The next summer I saw 
only the two-wheeled horse-cart which conveyed 
me thirty rods into the harbor on my way to the 
steamer. Yet we read that there were two horses 
and two yoke of oxen here in 1791, and we were 
told that there were several more when we were 
there, beside the stage team. In Barber's His- 
torical Collections, it is said, '*So rarely are wheel- 
carriages seen in the place that they are a matter 
of some curiosity to the younger part of the com- 
munity. A lad who understood navigating the 
ocean much better than land travel, on seeing a 
man driving a wagon in the street, expressed his 
surprise at his being able to drive so straight 
without the assistance of a rudder." There was 
no rattle of carts, and there would have been no 
rattle if there had been any carts. Some saddle- 
horses that passed the hotel in the evening merely 
made the sand fly with a rustling sound like a 
writer sanding his paper copiously, but there 
was no sound of their tread. No doubt there are 
more horses and carts there at present, A sleigh 
is never seen, or at least is a great novelty on the 
Cape, the snow being either absorbed by the 
sand or blown into drifts. 

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape gen- 
erally do not complain of their "soil," but will 
tell you that it is good enough for them to dry 
their fish on. 

Notwithstanding all this sand, we counted 



^260 CAPE COD 

three meeting-houses, and four school-house^! 
nearly as larcje. on this street, thouirh some had a 
tight board fence about them to preserve the 
plot within level and hard. Similar fences, even 
within a foot of many of the houses, gave the 
town a less cheerful and hospitable appearance 
than it would otherwise have had. Thev told us 
that, on the whole, the sand had made no prog- 
ress for the last ten years, the cows being no 
louijer permitted to jjo at laro^e. and everv means 
being taken to stop the sandy tide. 

In 17 "^7 P^o^•inceto\^^l was "invested with pe- 
culiar privileges." for its encouragement. Once 
or twice it was nearly abandoned ; but now lots 
on the street fetch a high price, though titles 
to them were hrst obtained by possession and 
improvement, and they are still transferred by 
quitclaim deeds merely, the township being the 
property of the State. But though lots were so 
valuable on the street, you might in many places 
throw a stone over them to where a man could 
still obtain land, or sand, by squatting on or im- 
pro\'ing it. 

Stones are ver^- rare on the Cape. I saw a very 
few small stones used for pavements and for 
bank walls, in one or two places in my walk, but 
thev are so scarce that, as I was informed, ves- 
sels have been forbidden to take them from the 
beach for ballast, and therefore their crews used 
to land at niirht and steal them. I did not hear 




s 












<5 



PROVINCETOWN 261 

of a rod of regular stone wall below Orleans. 
Yet I saw one man underpinning a new house 
in Eastham with some "rocks," as he called 
them, which he said a neighbor had collected with 
great pains in the course of years, and finally 
made over to him. This I thought was a gift 
worthy of being recorded, — equal to a transfer 
of California "rocks," almost. Another man 
who was assisting him, and who seemed to be a 
close observer of nature, hinted to me the locality 
of a rock in that neighborhood which was "forty- 
two paces in circumference and fifteen feet high," 
for he saw that I was a stranger, and, probably, 
would not carry it off. Yet I suspect that the 
locality of the few large rocks on the forearm 
of the Cape is well known to the inhabitants 
generally. I even met with one man who had 
got a smattering of mineralogy, but where he 
picked it up I could not guess. I thought that 
he would meet with some interesting geological 
nuts for him to crack, if he should ever visit 
the mainland, Cohasset, or Marblehead for 
instance. 

The well stones at the Highland Light were 
brought from Hingham, but the wells and cellars 
of the Cape are generally built of brick, which 
also are imported. The cellars, as well as the 
wells, are made in a circular form, to prevent the 
sand from pressing in the wall. The former are 
only from nine to twelve feet in diameter, and 



26^ C.\PE COD 

are said to he ven* cheap, since a sinijle tier oi 
brick 'v\-ill suffice for a cellar of even larger dimen- 
sions. Of course, if vou live in the sand, vou -w-ill 

w m 

not require a large cellar to hold your roots. In 
Provincetowu. when formerlv thev sutfered the 
sand to drive under their houses, obhterating 
all rudiments of a cellar, they did not raise a 
vegetable to put into one. One farmer in Well- 
fleet, who raised fifty bushels of potatoes, showed 
me his cellar under a corner of his house, not 
more than nine feet in diameter, looking Uke a 
cistern : but he had another of the same size 
under his barn. 

You need dig only a few feet almost anywhere 
near the shore of the Cape to tind fresh water. 
But that which we tasted was invariably poor. 
though the inliabitants called it good, as if they 
were comparing it with salt water. In the ac- 
count of Truro, it is said. "Wells dug near the 
shore are dry at low water, or rather at what is 
called young flood, but are replenished with 
the flo"v%-ing of the tide," — - the salt water, which 
is lowest in the sand, apparently forcing the 
fresh up. When you express your surprise at the 
greenness of a Pro\'incetown garden on the beach, 
in a drs" season, thev will sometimes tell vou that 
the tide forces the moisture up to th:m. It is an 
interesting fact that low sand-bars in the midst of 
the ocean, periiaps even those which are laid 
bare onlv at low tide, are reservoirs of fresh 



PROVINCETOWN ii63 

water at which the thirsty mariner can supply 
himself. They appear, like huge sjionges, to 
hold the rain and dew which fall on them, and 
which, by capillary attraction, are [)reventcd 
from minjrlinii with the surroundiuij brine. 

The Harbor of Provincetown — which, as 
well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide 
expanse of ocean, we overlooked from oiir perch 
— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, 
is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is 
said that the onlv ice seen in it drifts in sometimes 
from Barnstable or Plvmouth. Dwig-ht remarks 
that "The storms which prevail on the American 
coast orenerallv come from the east; and there is 
no other harbor on a windward shore within two 
hundred miles." J. D. Graham, who has made 
a very minute and tliorough survey of this har- 
bor and the adjacent waters, states that "its 
capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, 
and the complete shelter it affords from all winds, 
combine to render it one of the most valuable 
ship harbors on our coast." It is ihc harbor of 
the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts 
generally. It was known to navigators several 
years at least before the settlement of Plymouth. 
In Captain John Smith's map of New England, 
datcvi 1G14. it bears the name of Milford Haven, 
and Massachusetts Bav that of Stuard's Bav. 
His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name 
of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes 



264 CAPE COD 

have not always power to change a name for the 
worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is 
**a name which I suppose it will never lose till 
shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest 
hills." 

Many an early voyager was unexpectedly 
caught by this hook, and found himself embayed. 
On successive maps, Cape Cod appears sprinkled 
over with French, Dutch, and English names, as 
it made part of New France, New Holland, and 
New England. On one map Provincetown Har- 
bor is called "Fuic (bownet?) Bay," Barnstable 
Bay *'Staten Bay," and the sea north of it "Mare 
del Noort," or the North Sea. On another, the 
extremity of the Cape is called "Staten Hoeck," 
or the States Hook. On another, by Young, this 
has Noord Zee, Staten hoeck or Hit hoeck, but 
the copy at Cambridge has no date; the whole 
Cape is called "Niew Hollant," (after Hudson) ; 
and on another still, the shore between Race 
Point and Wood End appears to be called *'Be- 
vechier." In Champlain's admirable Map of 
New France, including the oldest recognizable 
map of what is now the New England coast with 
which I am acquainted. Cape Cod is called C. 
Blan {i. e. Cape White), from the color of its 
sands, and Massachusetts Bay is Baye Blanche. 
It was visited by De Monts and Champlain in 
1605, and the next year was further explored by 
Poitrincourt and Champlain. The latter has 



PROVINCETOWN 265 

given a particular account of these explorations 
in his "Voyages," together with separate charts 
and soundings of two of its harbors, — Malh 
Barre, the Bad Bar (Nauset Harbor?), a name 
now applied to what the French called Caj) 
Baturier; and Port Fortune, apparently Chat- 
ham Harbor. Both these names are copied on 
the map of "Novi Belgii," in Ogilvy's America. 
He also describes minutely the manners and cus- 
toms of the savages, and represents by a plate 
the savages surprising the French and killing 
five or six of them. The French afterward killed 
some of the natives, and wished, by way of re- 
venge, to carry off some and make them grind in 
their hand-mill at Port Royal. 

It is remarkable that there is not in English 
any adequate or correct account of the French 
exploration of what is now the coast of New Eng- 
land, between 1604 and 1608, though it is con- 
ceded that they then made the first permanent 
European settlement on the continent of North 
America north of St. Augustine. If the lions had 
been the painters it would have been otherwise. 
This omission is probably to be accounted for 
partly by the fact that the early edition of Cham- 
plain's "Voyages" had not been consulted for 
this purpose. This contains by far the most 
particular, and, I think, the most interesting 
chapter of what we may call the Ante-Pilgrim 
history of New England, extending to one hun- 



266 CAPE COD 

dred and sixty pages quarto; but appears to be 
unknown equally to the historian and the orator 
on Plymouth Rock. Bancroft does not mention 
Champlain at all among the authorities for De 
Monts's expedition, nor does he say that he ever 
visited the coast of New England. Though he 
bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in 
another sense, the leading spirit, as well as the 
historian of the expedition. Holmes, Hildreth, 
and Barry, and apparently all our historians who 
mention Champlain, refer to the edition of 1632, 
in which all the separate charts of our harbors, 
etc., and about one-half the narrative, are 
omitted ; for the author explored so many lands 
afterward that he could afford to forget a part of 
what he had done. Hildreth, speaking of De 
Monts's expedition, says that *'he looked into 
the Penobscot [in 1605], which Pring had dis- 
covered two years before," saying nothing about 
Champlain's extensive exploration of it for De 
Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to 
Purchas) ; also that he followed in the track of 
Pring along the coast "to Cape Cod, which he 
called Malabarre." (Haliburton had made the 
same statement before him in 1829. He called 
it Cap Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar) 
was the name given to a harbor on the east side 
of the Cape). Pring says nothing about a river 
there. Belknap says that Weymouth discovered 
it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges, says, in his narration 



PROVINCETOWN 267 

(Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. II., p. 19), 1658, that 
Pring in 1606 "made a perfect discovery of all 
the rivers and harbors." This is the most I can 
find. Bancroft makes Champlain to have dis- 
covered more western rivers in Maine, not 
naming the Penobscot ; he, however, must have 
been the discoverer of distances on this river 
(see Belknap, p. 147). Pring was absent from 
England only about six months, and sailed 
by this part of Cape Cod (Malabarre) be- 
cause it yielded no sassafras, while the French, 
who probably had not heard of Pring, were 
patiently for years exploring the coast in search 
of a place of settlement, sounding and survey- 
ing its harbors. 

John Smith's map, published in 1616, from 
observations in 1614-15, is by many regarded as 
the oldest map of New England. It is the first 
that was made after this country was called New 
England, for he so called it ; but in Champlain's 
"Voyages," edition 1613 (and Lescarbot, in 
1612, quotes a still earlier account of his voyage), 
there is a map of it made when it was known to 
Christendom as New France, called Carte Geo- 
graphique de la Nouvelle Franse faictte par le 
Sieur de Champlain Saint Tongois Cappitaine 
ordinaire pour le roi en la Marine^ — faict Ven 
1612, from his observations between 1604 and 
1607; a map extending from Labrador to Cape 
Cod and westward to the Great Lakes, and 



268 CAPE COD 

crowded with information, geographical, ethno- 
graphical, zoological, and botanical. He even 
gives the variation of the compass as observed by 
himself at that date on many parts of the coast. 
This, taken together with the many separate 
charts of harbors and their soundings on a large 
scale, which this volume contains, — among the 
rest. Qui ni be quy (Kennebec), Chouacoit R. 
(Saco R.), Le Beau port, Port St. Louis (near 
Cape Ann) , and others on our coast, — but 
which are not in the edition of 1632, makes this a 
completer map of the New England and adja- 
cent northern coast than was made for half a 
century afterward, almost, we might be allowed 
to say, till another Frenchman, Des Barres, made 
another for us, which only our late Coast Survey 
has superseded. Most of the maps of this coast 
made for a long time after betray their indebted- 
ness to Champlain. He was a skilful navigator, 
a man of science, and geographer to the King of 
France. He crossed the Atlantic about twenty 
times, and made nothing of it; often in a small 
vessel in which few would dare to go to sea to- 
day; and on one occasion making the yoyage 
from Tadoussac to St. Malo in eighteen days. 
He was in this neighborhood, that is, between 
Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod, observ- 
ing the land and its inhabitants, and making a 
map of the coast, from May, 1604, to September, 
1607, or about three and a half years, and he has 



PROVINCETOWN 269 

described minutely his method of surveying har- 
bors. By his own account, a part of his map 
was engraved in 1604 ( ?) . When Pont-Grave and 
others returned to France in 1606, he remained 
at Port Royal with Poitrincourt, "in order," 
says he, "by the aid of God, to finish the chart 
of the coasts which I had begun" ; and again in 
his volume, printed before John Smith visited 
this part of America, he says: "It seems to me 
that I have done my duty as far as I could, if I 
have not forgotten to put in my said chart what- 
ever I saw, and give a particular knowledge to 
the public of what had never been described nor 
discovered so particularly as I have done it, al- 
though some other may have heretofore written 
of it ; but it was a very small affair in comparison 
with what we have discovered within the last 
ten years." 

It is not generally remembered, if known, by 
the descendants of the Pilgrims, that when their 
forefathers were spending their first memorable 
winter in the New World, they had for neighbors 
a colony of French no further off than Port Royal 
(Annapolis, Nova Scotia), three hundred miles 
distant (Prince seems to make it about five hun- 
dred miles) ; where, in spite of many vicissitudes, 
they had been for fifteen years. They built a 
grist-mill there as early as 1606; also made 
bricks and turpentine on a stream, Williamson 
says, in 1606. De Monts, who was a Protestant, 



270 CAPE COD 

brought his minister with him, who came to 
blows with the Catholic priest on the subject of 
reHeion. Though these founders of Acadie en- 
dured no less than the Pilgrims, and about the 
same proportion of them — thirty-five out of 
seventy-nine (Williamson's Maine says thirty- 
six out of seventv) — died the first winter at St. 
Croix, 1604-5, sixteen years earlier, no orator, 
to my knowledge, has ever celebrated their enter- 
prise (Williamson's History^ of Maine does con- 
siderably) , while the trials which their successors 
and descendants endured at the hands of the 
Ensflish have furnished a theme for both the his- 
torian and poet. (See Bancroft's History and 
Longfellow's Evangeline.) The remains at their 
fort at St. Croix were discovered at the end of the 
last century, and helped decide where the true 
St. Croix, our boundary, was. 

The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are 
probably older than the oldest English monu- 
ment in New England north of the Elizabeth 
Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, 
for if there are any traces of Gosnold's store- 
house left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft 
says, advisedly, in 1834, "It requires a believ- 
ing eye to discern the ruins of the fort"; and 
that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. 
Charles T. Jackson tells me that, in the course 
of a o-eological survev in 18'27, he discovered 
a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat 



PROVINCETOWN 271 

Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in 
Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat-of-arms 
and the date 1606, which is fourteen years 
earlier than the landing of the Pilgrims. This 
was left in the possession of Judge Haliburton, 
of Nova Scotia. 

There were Jesuit priests in what has since 
been called New England, converting the savages 
at Mount Desert, then St. Savior, in 1613, — 
having come over to Port Roval in 1611, though 
they were almost immediately interrupted by the 
English, years before the Pilgrims came liither 
to enjoy their own religion. This according to 
Champlain. Charlevoix says the same; and 
after coming from France in 1611, went west 
from Port Roval along the coast as far as the 
Kennebec in 161'-2, and was often carried from 
Port Roval to Mount Desert. 

Indeed, the Englishman's liistory of Neiv Eng- 
land commences onlv when it ceases to be New 
France. Though Cabot was the first to discover 
the continent of North America, Champlain, in 
the edition of his "Voyages" printed in 163!^, 
after the English had for a season got possession 
of Quebec and Port Royal, complains with no 
little justice: "The common consent of all 
Europe is to represent New France as extending 
at least to the thirtv-fifth and thirtv-sixth degrees 
of latitude, as appears by the maps of the world 
printed in Spain, Italy, Holland, Flanders, Ger- 



272 CAPE COD 

many, and England, until they possessed them- 
selves of the coasts of New France, where are 
Acadie, the Etchemins (Maine and New Bruns- 
wick) , the Almouchicois (Massachusetts ?) , and 
the Great River St. Lawrence, where they have 
imposed, according to their fancy, such names 
as New England, Scotland, and others ; but it is 
not easy to efface the memory of a thing which is 
known to all Christendom." 

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabit- 
able shore of Labrador, gave the English no just 
title to New England, or to the United States, 
generally, any more than to Patagonia. His care- 
ful biographer (Biddle) is not certain in what 
voyage he ran down the coast of the United States 
as is reported, and no one tells us what he saw. 
Miller, in the New York Hist. Coll., Vol. I., p. 
28, says he does not appear to have landed any- 
where. Contrast with this Verrazzani's tarrying 
fifteen days at one place on the New England 
coast, and making frequent excursions into the 
interior thence. It chances that the latter's 
letter to Francis I., in 1524, contains "the ear- 
liest original account extant of the Atlantic coast 
of the United States"; and even from that time 
the northern part of it began to be called La 
Terra Francese, or French Land. A part of it 
was called New Holland before it was called 
New England. The English were very back- 
ward to explore and settle the continent which 



PROVINCETOWN 273 

they had stumbled upon. The French preceded 
them both in their attempts to colonize the con- 
tinent of North America (Carolina and Florida, 
1562-4), and in their first permanent settlement 
(Port Royal, 1605) ; and the right of possession, 
naturally enough, was the one which England 
mainly respected and recognized in the case of 
Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the 
time of Henry VII. 

The explorations of the French gave to the 
world the first valuable maps of these coasts. 
Denys of Honfleur made a map of the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence in 1506. No sooner had Cartier 
explored the St. Lawrence, in 1535, than there 
began to be published by his countrymen remark- 
ably accurate charts of that river as far up as 
Montreal. It is almost all of the continent north 
of Florida that you recognize on charts for more 
than a generation afterward, — though Verraz- 
zani's rude plot (made under French auspices) 
was regarded by Hackluyt, more than fifty years 
after his voyage (in 1524), as the most accurate 
representation of our coast. The French trail is 
distinct. They went measuring and sounding, 
and when they got home had something to show 
for their voyages and explorations. There was 
no danger of their charts being lost, as Cabot's 
have been. 

The most distinguished navigators of that day 
were Italians, or of Italian descent, and Portu- 

18 



274 CAPE COD 

guese. The French and Spaniards, though less 
advanced in the science of navigation than the 
former, possessed more imagination and spirit of 
adventure than the English, and were better 
fitted to be the explorers of a new continent even 
as late as 1751. 

This spirit it was which so early carried the 
French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi 
on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river 
on the south. It was long before our frontiers 
reached their settlements in the west, and a voya- 
geur or coureur de hois is still our conductor there. 
Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is a Spanish 
one. Augustine in Florida, and Santa Fe in 
New Mexico [1582], both built by the Spaniards, 
are considered the oldest towns in the United 
States. Within the memory of the oldest man, 
the Anglo-Americans were confined between the 
Appalachian Mountains and the sea, "a space not 
two hundred miles broad," while the Mississippi 
was by treaty the eastern boundary of New 
France. (See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio, 
London, 1763, bound up with the travels of Sir 
John Bartram.) So far as inland discovery was 
concerned, the adventurous spirit of the Eng- 
lish was that of sailors who land but for a day, 
and their enterprise the enterprise of traders. 
Cabot spoke like an Englishman, as he was, if 
he said, as one reports, in reference to the dis- 
covery of the American Continent, when he 



PROVINCETOWN 275 

found it running toward the north, that it was a 
great disappointment to him, being in his way to 
India ; but we would rather add to than detract 
from the fame of so great a discoverer. 

Samuel Penhallow, in his history (Boston, 
1726), p. 51, speaking of "Port Royal and Nova 
Scotia," says of the last that its "first seizure 
was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the crown of 
Great Britain, in the reign of King Henry VII. ; 
but lay dormant till the year 1621," when Sir 
William Alexander got a patent of it, and pos- 
sessed it some years; and afterward Sir David 
Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, "to the 
surprise of all thinking men, it was given up 
unto the French." 

Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the 
first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who 
was not the most likely to be misinformed, who, 
moreover, has the fame, at least, of having dis- 
covered Wachusett Mountain (discerned it forty 
miles inland), talking about the "Great Lake" 
and the "hideous swamps about it," near which 
the Connecticut and the "Potomack" took their 
rise; and among the memorable events of the 
year 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irish- 
man's expedition to the "White hill," from whose 
top he saw eastward what he "judged to be the 
Gulf of Canada," and westward what he "judged 
to be the great lake which Canada River comes 
out of," and where he found much "Muscovy 



276 CAPE COD 

glass," and "could rive out pieces of forty feet 
long and seven or eight broad." While the 
very inhabitants of New England were thus 
fabling about the country a hundred miles in- 
land, which was a terra incognita to them, — or 
rather many years before the earliest date re- 
ferred to, — Champlain, the jirst Governor of 
Canada, not to mention the inland discoveries of 
Cartier,^ Roberval, and others, of the preceding 
century, and his own earlier voyage, had already 
gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest 
forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and 
wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of 
New England. In Champlain's "Voyages," 
printed in 1613, there is a plate representing a 
fight in which he aided the Canada Indians 
against the Iroquois, near the south end of Lake 
Champlain, in July, 1609, eleven years before 
the settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he 
joined the Algonquins in an expedition against 
the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest 
of New York. This is that "Great Lake," which 
the English, hearing some rumor of from 

^ It is remarkable that the first, if not the only, part of New 
England which Cartier saw was Vermont (he also saw the moun- 
tains of New York), from Montreal Mountain, in 1535, sixty- 
seven years before Gosnold saw Cape Cod. 7/ seeing is discov- 
ering, — and that is all that it is proved that Cabot knew of the 
coast of the United States, — then Cartier (to omit Verrazani and 
Gomez) was the discoverer of New England rather than Gosnold, 
who is commonly so styled. 



PROVINCETOWN 277 

the French, long after, locate in an ''Imaginary 
Province called Laconia, and spent several years 
about 1630 in the vain attempt to discover.'* 
(Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll., 
Vol. II., p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter 
on this "Great Lake." In the edition of Cham- 
plain's map dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara 
appear; and in a great lake northwest of Mer 
Douce (Lake Huron) there is an island repre- 
sented, over which is written, ^^Isle ou il y a une 
mine de cuivre,'* — "Island where there is a 
mine of copper." This will do for an offset to 
our Governor's "Muscovy Glass." Of all these 
adventures and discoveries we have a minute 
and faithful account, giving facts and dates as 
well as charts and soundings, all scientific and 
Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable or trav- 
eller's story. 

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans 
long before the seventeenth century. It may be 
that Cabot himself beheld it. Verrazzani, in 
1524, according to his own account, spent fifteen 
days on our coast, in latitude 41° 40' (some sup- 
pose in the harbor of Newport), and often went 
five or six leagues into the interior there, and he 
says that he sailed thence at once one hundred 
and fifty leagues northeasterly, always in sight of 
the coast. There is a chart in Hackluyt's "Divers 
Voyages," made according to Verrazzani's plot, 
which last is praised for its accuracy by Hackluyt, 



278 CAPE COD 

but I cannot distinguish Cape Cod on it, unless 
it is the "C. Arenas," which is in the right lati- 
tude, though ten degrees west of "Claudia," 
which is thought to be Block Island. 

The "Biographic Universelle " informs us 
that *'An ancient manuscript chart drawn in 
1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmographer, 
has preserved the memory of the voyage of 
Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by Charles the 
Fifth]. One reads in it under {au dessous) the 
place occupied by the States of New York, Con- 
necticut, and Rhode Island, Terre d'Etienne 
Gomez, qu'il decouvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne 
Gomez, which he discovered in 1525)." This 
chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar 
in the last century. 

Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot in Canada in 
1642, one of the most skilful navigators of his 
time, and who has given remarkably minute and 
accurate direction for sailing up the St. Law- 
rence, showing that he knows what he is talking 
about, says in his ''Routier'' (it is in Hackluyt), 
"I have been at a bay as far as the forty-second 
degree, between Norimbegue [the Penobscot.^] 
and Florida, but I have not explored the bottom 
of it, and I do not know whether it passes from 
one land to the other," i. e. to Asia. (" J'ai ete a 
une Baye jusques par les 42^ degres entre la 
Norimbegue et la Floride; mais je n'en ai pas 
cherche le fond, et ne S9ais pas si elle passe d'une 



PROVINCETOWN 279 

terre a I'autre.") This may refer to Massachu- 
setts Bay, if not possibly to the western inclina- 
tion of the coast a little farther south. When he 
says, *'I have no doubt that the Norimbegue 
enters into the river of Canada," he is per- 
haps so interpreting some account which the 
Indians had given respecting the route from the 
St. Lawrence to the Atlantic by the St. John, 
or Penobscot, or possibly even the Hudson 
River. 

We hear rumors of this country of "Norum- 
bega" and its great city from many quarters. In 
a discourse by a great French sea-captain in 
Ramusio's third volume {1556-65), this is said to 
be the name given to the land by its inhabitants, 
and Verrazzani is called the discoverer of it; 
another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the 
river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island 
on an accompanying chart. It is frequently 
spoken of by old writers as a country of indefi- 
nite extent, between Canada and Florida, and 
it appears as a large island with Cape Breton at 
its eastern extremity, on the map made accord- 
ing to Verrazzani's plot in Hackluyt's "Divers 
Voyages." These maps and rumors may have 
been the origin of the notion, common among 
the early settlers, that New England was an 
island. The country and city of Norumbega 
appear about where Maine now is on a map in 
Ortelius ("Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," Ant- 



280 CAPE COD 

werp, 1570), and the "R. Grande" is drawn 
where the Penobscot or St. John might be. 

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur 
de Monts to explore the coast of Norumbegue, 
sailed up the Penobscot twenty-two or twenty- 
three leagues from "Isle Haute," or till he was 
stopped by the falls. He says : "I think that this 
river is that which many pilots and historians call 
Norumbegue, and which the greater part have 
described as great and spacious, with numerous 
islands; and its entrance in the forty-third or 
forty-third and one half or, according to others, 
the forty-fourth degree of latitude, more or less." 
He is convinced that "the greater part" of those 
who speak of a great city there have never seen it, 
but repeat a mere rumor, but he thinks that some 
have seen the mouth of the river since it answers 
to their description. 

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes : "Three 
or four leagues north of the Cap de Poitrincourt 
[near the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova 
Scotia] we found a cross, which was very old, 
covered with moss and almost all decayed, which 
was an evident sign that there had formerly been 
Christians there." 

Also the following passage from Lescarbot will 
show how much the neighboring coasts were fre- 
quented by Europeans in the sixteenth century. 
Speaking of his return from Port Royal to France 
in 1607, he says : "At last, within four leagues of 



PROVINCETOWN 281 

Campseau [the Gut of Canso], we arrived at a 
harbor [in Nova Scotia], where a worthy old gen- 
tleman from St. John de Lus, named Captain 
Savale, was fishing, who received us with the 
utmost courtesy. And as this harbor, which is 
small, but very good, has no name, I have given 
it on my geographical chart the name of Savalet. 
[It is on Champlain's map also.] This worthy 
man told us that this voyage was the forty-second 
which he had made to those parts, and yet the 
Newfoundlanders [Terre neuviers] make only 
one a year. He was wonderfully content with his 
fishery, and informed us that he made daily fifty 
crowns' worth of cod, and that his voyage would 
be worth ten thousand francs. He had sixteen 
men in his employ ; and his vessel was of eighty 
tons, which could carry a hundred thousand dry 
cod." (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612.) 
They dried their fish on the rocks on shore. 

The "Isola della Rena" (Sable Island .?) ap- 
pears on the chart of *'Nuova Francia" and 
Norumbega, accompanying the "Discourse" 
above referred to in Ramusio's third volume, edi- 
tion 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there being 
at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, "grass pastured by 
oxen (hceujs) and cows which the Portuguese car- 
ried there more than sixty years ago," i. e. sixty 
years before 1613; in a later edition he says, 
which came out of a Spanish vessel which was 
lost in endeavoring to settle on the Isle of Sable ; 



282 CAPE COD 

and he states that De la Roche's men, who were 
left on this island seven years from 1598, lived 
on the flesh of these cattle which they found "en 
quantie," and built houses out of the wrecks of 
vessels which came to the island ("perhaps Gil- 
bert's"), there being no wood or stone. Les- 
carbot says that they lived "on fish and the milk 
of cows left there about eighty years before by 
Baron de Leri and Saint Just." Charlevoix 
says they ate up the cattle and then lived on fish. 
Haliburton speaks of cattle left there as a rumor. 
De Leri and Saint Just had suggested plans of 
colonization on the Isle of Sable as early as 1515 
(1508 ?) according to Bancroft, referring to Char- 
levoix. These are but a few of the instances 
which I might quote. 

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been dis- 
covered in 1602. We will consider at length 
under what circumstances, and with what obser- 
vation and expectations, the first Englishmen 
whom history clearly discerns approached the 
coast of New England. According to the ac- 
counts of Archer and Brereton (both of whom 
accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of March, 
1602, old style. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold 
set sail from Falmouth, England, for the North 
part of Virginia, in a small bark called the Con- 
cord, they being in all, says one account, "thirty- 
two persons, whereof eight mariners and sailors, 
twelve purposing upon the discovery to return 



PROVINCETOWN 283 

with the ship for England, the rest remain there 
for population." This is regarded as "the first 
attempt of the English to make a settlement 
within the limits of New England." Pursuing a 
new and a shorter course than the usual one by 
the Canaries, "the 14th of April following" they 
had sight of Saint Mary's, an island of the 
Azores. As their sailors were few and "none 
of the best " (I use their own phrases), and they 
were "going upon an unknown coast," they were 
not "overbold to stand in with the shore but in 
open weather"; so they made their first dis- 
covery of land with the lead. The 23d of April 
the ocean appeared yellow, but on taking up 
some of the water in a bucket, "it altered not 
either in color or taste from the sea azure." The 
7th of May they saw divers birds whose names 
they knew, and many others in their "English 
tongue of no name." The 8th of May "the 
water changed to a yellowish green, where at 
seventy fathoms" they "had ground." The 
9th, they had upon their lead "many glittering 
stones," — "which might promise some mineral 
matter in the bottom." The 10th, they were over 
a bank which they thought to be near the western 
end of St. John's Island, and saw schools of fish. 
The 12th, they say, "continually passed fleeting 
by us sea-oare, which seemed to have their mov- 
able course towards the northeast." On the 
13th, they observed "great beds of weeds, much 



284 CAPE COD 

wood, and divers things else floating by," and 
"had smelling of the shore much as from the 
southern Cape and Andalusia in Spain." On 
Friday, the 14th, early in the morning they de- 
scried land on the north, in the latitude of forty- 
three degrees, apparently some part of the coast 
of Maine. Williamson (History of Maine) says 
it certainly could not have been south of the cen- 
tral Isle of Shoals. Belknap inclines to think it 
the south side of Cape Ann. Standing fair along 
by the shore, about twelve o'clock the same day, 
they came to anchor and were visited by eight 
savages, who came off to them "in a Biscay 
shallop, with sail and oars," — "an iron grapple, 
and a kettle of copper." These they at first mis- 
took for "Christians distressed." One of them 
was "apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches 
of black serge, made after our sea-fashion, hoes 
and shoes on his feet; all the rest (saving one 
that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were 
naked." They appeared to have had dealings 
with "some Basques of St. John de Luz, and to 
understand much more than we," say the Eng- 
lish, "for want of language, could comprehend." 
But they soon "set sail westward, leaving them 
and their coast." (This was a remarkable dis- 
covery for discoverers.) 

"The 15th day," writes Gabriel Archer, "we 
had again sight of the land, which made ahead, 
being as we thought an island, by reason of a 



PROVINCETOWN 285 

large sound that appeared westward between it 
and the main, for coming to the west end thereof, 
we did perceive a large opening, we called it 
Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to anchor 
in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of 
cod-fish, for which we altered the name and 
called it Cape Cod. Here we saw skulls of her- 
ring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great 
abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but with- 
out danger; also we came to anchor again in 
sixteen fathoms, fair by the land in the latitude 
of forty-two degrees. This Cape is well near a 
mile broad, and lieth northeast by east. The 
captain went here ashore, and found the ground 
to be full of peas, strawberries, whortleberries, 
etc., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore 
somewhat deep ; the firewood there by us taken 
in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel, and beach. 
A young Indian came here to the captain, armed 
with his bow and arrows, and had certain plates 
of copper hanging at his ears ; he showed a wil- 
lingness to help us in our occasions." 

"The 16th we trended the coast southerly, 
which was all champaign and full of grass, but 
the islands somewhat woody." 

Or, according to the account of John Brere- 
ton, "riding here," that is, where they first com- 
municated with the natives, "in no very good 
harbor, and withal doubting the weather, about 
three of the clock the same day in the afternoon 



286 CAPE COD 

we weighed, and standing southerly off into sea 
the rest of that day and the night following, with 
a fresh gale of wind, in the morning we found 
ourselves embayed with a mighty headland ; but 
coming to an anchor about nine of the clock the 
same day, within a league of the shore, we 
hoisted out the one half of our shallop, and Cap- 
tain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and three 
others, went ashore, being a white sandy and 
very bold shore; and marching all that after- 
noon with our muskets on our necks, on the 
highest hills which we saw (the weather very 
hot), at length we perceived this headland to be 
parcel of the main, and sundry islands lying 
almost round about it; so returning towards 
evening to our shallop (for by that time the other 
part was brought ashore and set together), we 
espied an Indian, a young man of proper stature, 
and of a pleasing countenance, and after some 
familiarity with him, we left him at the sea side, 
and returned to our ship, where in five or six 
hours' absence we had pestered our ship so with 
codfish, that we threw numbers of them over- 
board again ; and surely I am persuaded that in 
the months of March, April, and May, there is 
upon this coast better fishing, and in as great 
plenty, as in Newfoundland; for the skulls of 
mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that we 
daily saw as we went and came from the shore, 
were wonderful," etc. 



PROVINCETOWN 287 



<<- 



From this place we sailed round about this 
headland, almost all the points of the compass, 
the shore very bold ; but as no coast is free from 
dangers, so I am persuaded this is as free as any. 
The land somewhat low, full of goodly woods, 
but in some places plain." 

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape 
they landed. If it was inside, as would appear 
from Brereton's words, "From this place we 
sailed round about this headland almost all the 
points of the compass," it must have been on the 
western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet. To 
one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along the 
Cape, the only "white, sandy, and very bold 
shore" that appears is in these towns, though 
the bank is not so high there as on the eastern 
side. At a distance of four or five miles the sandy 
cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow sand- 
stone, they are so level and regular, especially in 
Wellfleet, — the fort of the land defending itself 
against the encroachments of the Ocean. They 
are streaked here and there with a reddish sand 
as if painted. Farther south the shore is more 
flat, and less obviously and abruptly sandy, and 
a little tinge of green here and there in the 
marshes appears to the sailor like a rare and pre- 
cious emerald. But in the Journal of Pring's 
Voyage the next year (and Salterne, who was 
with Pring, had accompanied Gosnold) it is said, 
" Departing hence [i. e. from Savage Rocks] we 



288 CAPE COD 

bore unto that great gulf which Captain Gosnold 
overshot the year before." ^ 

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the 
southeasterly extremity "Point Cave," till they 
came to an island which they named Martha's 
Vineyard (now called No Man's Land), and an- 
other on which they dwelt awhile, which they 
named Elizabeth's Island, in honor of the Queen, 
one of the group since so called, now known by 
its Indian name Cuttyhunk. There they built a 
small storehouse, the first house built by the 
English in New England, whose cellar could re- 
cently still be seen, made partly of stones taken 
from the beach. Bancroft says (edition of 1837), 
the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned. 
They who were to have remained becoming dis- 
contented, all together set sail for England with a 
load of sassafras and other commodities, on the 
18th of June following. 

The next year came Martin Pring, looking for 
sassafras, and thereafter they began to come 
thick and fast, until long after sassafras had lost 
its reputation. 

These are the oldest acounts which we have of 

* "Savage Rock," which some have supposed to be, from the 
name, the Salvages, a ledge about two miles off Rockland, Cape 
Ann, was probably the Nubble, a large, high rock near the shore, 
on the east side of York Harbor, Maine. The first land made by 
Gosnold is presumed by experienced navigators to be Cape Eliz- 
abeth, on the same coast. (See Babson's History of Gloucester, 
Massachusetts.) 



PROVINCETOWN 289 

Cape Cod, unless, perchance. Cape Cod is, as 
some suppose, the same with that "Kial-ar-nes" 
or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old Ice- 
landic manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric the 
Red, after sailing many days southwest from 
Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004 ; and 
where, according to another, in some respects 
less trustworthy manuscript, Thor-finn Karlse- 
fue ("that is, one who promises or is destined to 
be an able or great man" ; he is said to have had 
a son born in New. England, from whom Thor- 
waldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing 
past, in the year 1007, with his wife Gudrida, 
Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne Grinolfson, and 
Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished Norsemen, 
in three ships containing *'one hundred and sixty 
men and all sorts of live stock" (probably the 
first Norway rats among the rest), having the 
land *'on the right side" of them, "roved ashore," 
and found ''Or-cefi (trackless deserts)," and 
'*Strand-ir lang-ar ok sand-ar (long narrow 
beaches and sand-hills)," and "called the shores 
Furdustrand-ir (Wonder-Strands), because the 
sailing by them seemed long." 

According to the Icelandic manuscripts, Thor- 
wald was the first, then, — unless possibly one 
Biarne Heriulfson (i. e. son of Heriulf) who had 
been seized with a great desire to travel, sailing 
from Iceland to Greenland in the year 986 to 
join his father who had migrated thither, for he 

19 



290 CAPE COD 

had resolved, says the manuscript, "to spend the 
following winter, like all the preceding ones, with 
his father," — being driven far to the southwest 
by a storm, when it cleared up saw the low land 
of Cape Cod looming faintly in the distance; 
but this not answering to the description of 
Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing 
northward along the coast, at length reached 
Greenland and his father. At any rate, he may 
put forth a strong claim to be regarded as the 
discoverer of the American continent. 

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose 
younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed 
it without chart or compass, and they are said to 
have been "the first who learned the art of sail- 
ing on a wind." Moreover, they had a habit of 
casting their door-posts overboard and settling 
wherever they went ashore. But as Biarne, and 
Thorwald, and Thorfinn have not mentioned the 
latitude and longitude distinctly enough, though 
we have great respect for them as skilful and 
adventurous navigators, we must for the present 
remain in doubt as to what capes they did see. 
We think that they were considerably further 
north. 

If time and space permitted, I could present 
the claims of other several worthy persons. Les- 
carbot, in 1609, asserts that the French sailors 
had been accustomed to frequent the Newfound- 
land Banks from time immemorial, "for the cod- 



PROVINCETOWN 291 

fish with which they feed almost all Europe 
and supply all sea-going vessels," and accord- 
ingly "the language of the nearest lands is half 
Basque"; and he quotes Postel, a learned but 
extravagant French author, born in 1510, only 
six years after the Basques, Bretons, and Nor- 
mans are said to have discovered the Grand 
Bank and adjacent islands, as saying, in his 
Charte Geographiquey which we have not seen: 
"Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utili- 
tatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri 
solita, et ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari 
solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus inculta et 
vasta, spreta est." "This land, on account of its 
very lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be 
visited by the Gauls from the very dawn of his- 
tory, and more than sixteen hundred years ago 
was accustomed to be frequented; but because 
it was unadorned with cities, and waste, it was 
despised." 

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered the 
mine, but I discovered it to the world. And now 
Bob Smith is putting in his claim. 

But let us not laugh at Postel and his visions. 
He was perhaps better posted up than we ; and 
if he does seem to draw the long bow, it may be 
because he had a long way to shoot, — quite 
across the Atlantic, If America was found and 
lost again once, as most of us believe, then why 
not twice .^^ especially as there were likely to be 



292 CAPE COD 

so few records of an earlier discovery. Consider 
what stuff history is made of, — that for the most 
part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity. 
Who will tell us even how many Russians were 
engaged in the battle of the Chernaya, the other 
day ? Yet no doubt, Mr. Scriblerus, the histo- 
rian, will fix on a definite number for the school- 
boys to commit to their excellent memories. 
What, then, of the number of Persians at Sala- 
mis ? The historian whom I read knew as much 
about the position of the parties and their tactics 
in the last-mentioned affair, as they who de- 
scribe a recent battle in an article for the press 
now-a-days, before the particulars have arrived. 
I believe that, if I were to live the life of man- 
kind over again myself (which I would not be 
hired to do), with the Universal History in my 
hands, I should not be able to tell what was 
what. 

Earlier than the date Postel refers to, at any 
rate. Cape Cod lay in utter darkness to the civ- 
ilized world, though even then the sun rose from 
eastward out of the sea every day, and, rolling 
over the Cape, went down westward into the 
Bay. It was even then Cape and Bay, — ay, 
the Cape of Codfish, and the Bay of the Massa- 
chusetts, perchance. 

Quite recently, on the 11th of November, 1620, 
old style, as is well known, the Pilgrims in the 
Mayflower came to anchor in Cape Cod harbor. 



PROVINCETOWN 293 

They had loosed from Plymouth, England, the 
6th of September, and, in the words of "Mourts' 
Relation," "after many difficulties in boisterous 
storms, at length, by God's providence, upon the 
9th of November, we espied land, which we 
deemed to be Cape Cod, and so afterward it 
proved. Upon the 11th of November we came 
to anchor in the bay, which is a good harbor and 
pleasant bay, circled round except in the en- 
trance, which is about four miles over from land 
to land, compassed about to the very sea with 
oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet 
wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of 
ships may safely ride. There we relieved our- 
selves with wood and water, and refreshed our 
people, while our shallop was fitted to coast the 
bay, to search for an habitation." There we put 
up at Fuller's Hotel, passing by the Pilgrim 
House as too high for us (we learned afterward 
that we need not have been so particular), and 
we refreshed ourselves with hashed fish and 
beans, beside taking in a supply of liquids (which 
were not intoxicating) , while our legs were refitted 
to coast the back-side. Further say the Pilgrims : 
"We could not come near the shore by three 
quarters of an English mile, because of shallow 
water; which was a great prejudice to us; for 
our people going on shore were forced to wade a 
bow-shot or two in going aland, which caused 
many to get colds and coughs ; for it was many 



294 CAPE COD 

times freezing cold weather." They afterwards 
say: "It brought much weakness amongst us"; 
and no doubt it led to the death of some at 
Plymouth. 

The harbor of Provincetown is very shallow 
near the shore, especially about the head, where 
the Pilgrims landed. When I left this place the 
next summer, the steamer could not get up to 
the wharf, but we were carried out to a large boat 
in a cart as much as thirty rods in shallow water, 
while a troop of little boys kept us company, 
wading around, and thence we pulled to the 
steamer by a rope. The harbor being thus shal- 
low and sandy about the shore, coasters are ac- 
customed to run in here to paint their vessels, 
which are left high and dry when the tide goes 
down. 

It chanced that the Sunday morning that we 
were there, I had joined a party of men who were 
smoking and lolling over a pile of boards on one 
of the wharves (nihil humanum a me, etc.) , when 
our landlord, who was a sort of tithing-man, 
went off to stop some sailors who were engaged 
in painting their vessel. Our party was recruited 
from time to time by other citizens, who came 
rubbing their eyes as if they had just got out of 
bed; and one old man remarked to me that it 
was the custom there to lie abed very late on 
Sunday, it being a day of rest. I remarked that, 
as I thought, they might as well let the men 




The day of rest 



PROVINCETOWN 295 

paint, for all us. It was not noisy work, and 
would not disturb our devotions. But a young 
man in the company, taking his pipe out of his 
mouth, said that it was a plain contradiction of 
the law of God, which he quoted, and if they did 
not have some such regulation, vessels would run 
in there to tar, and rig, and paint, and they would 
have no Sabbath at all. This was a good argu- 
ment enough, if he had not put it in the name of 
religion. The next summer, as I sat on a hill 
there one sultry Sunday afternoon the meeting- 
house windows being open, my meditations were 
interrupted by the noise of a preacher who 
shouted like a boatswain, profaning the quiet 
atmosphere, and who, I fancied, must have 
taken off his coat. Few things could have been 
more disgusting or disheartening. I wished the 
ti thing-man would stop him. 

The Pilgrims say: *' There was the greatest 
store of fowl that ever we saw." 

We saw no fowl there, except gulls of various 
kinds; but the greatest store of them that ever 
we saw was on a flat but slightly covered with 
water on the east side of the harbor, and we ob- 
served a man who had landed there from a boat 
creeping along the shore in order to get a shot at 
them, but they all rose and flew away in a great 
scattering flock, too soon for him, having ap- 
parently got their dinners, though he did not get 
his. 



296 CAPE COD 

It is remarkable that the Pilgrims (or their 
reporter) describe this part of the Cape, not only 
as well wooded, but as having a deep and ex- 
cellent soil, and hardly mention the word sand. 
Now what strikes the voyager is the barrenness 
and desolation of the land. They found "the 
ground or earth sand-hills, much like the downs 
in Holland, but much better the crust of the 
earth, a spit*s depth, excellent black earth." We 
found that the earth had lost its crust, — if, in- 
deed, it ever had any, — and that there was no 
soil to speak of. We did not see enough black 
earth in Provincetown to fill a flower-pot, unless 
in the swamps. They found it "all wooded with 
oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, vines, 
some ash, walnut; the wood for the most part 
open and without underwood, fit either to go or 
ride in." We saw scarcely anything high enough 
to be called a tree, except a little low wood at the 
east end of the town, and the few ornamental 
trees in its yards, — only a few small specimens 
of some of the above kinds on the sand-hills in 
the rear ; but it was all thick shrubbery, without 
any large wood above it, very unfit either to go 
or ride in. The greater part of the land was a 
perfect desert of yellow sand, rippled like waves 
by the wind, in which only a little Beach-grass 
grew here and there. They say that, just after 
passing the head of East Harbor Creek, the 
boughs and bushes "tore" their "very armor in 



PROVINCETOWN 297 

pieces " (the same thing happened to such armor 
as we wore, when out of curiosity we took to the 
bushes) ; or they came to deep valleys, "full of 
brush, wood-gaile, and long grass," and "found 
springs of fresh water." 

For the most part we saw neither bough nor 
bush, not so much as a shrub to tear our clothes 
against if we would, and a sheep would lose none 
of its fleece, even if it found herbage enough to 
make fleece grow there. We saw rather beach 
and poverty-grass, and merely sorrel enough to 
color the surface. I suppose, then, by Wood- 
gaile they mean the Bay berry. 

All accounts agree in affirming that this part 
of the Cape was comparatively well wooded a 
century ago. But notwithstanding the great 
changes which have taken place in these respects, 
I cannot but think that we must make some 
allowance for the greenness of the Pilgrims in 
these matters, which caused them to see green. 
We do not believe that the trees were large or 
the soil was deep here. Their account may be 
true particularly, but it is generally false. They 
saw literally, as well as figuratively, but one side 
of the Cape. They naturally exaggerated the 
fairness and attractiveness of the land, for they 
were glad to get to any land at all after that 
anxious voyage. Everything appeared to them 
of the color of the rose, and had the scent of 
juniper and sassafras. Very different is the gen- 



298 CAPE COD 

eral and off-hand account given by Captain John 
Smith, who was on this coast six years earlier, 
and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, and 
soldier, who had seen too much of the world to 
exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on a part of it. 
In his "Description of New England," printed 
in 1616, after speaking of Accomack, since called 
Plymouth, he says: *'Cape Cod is the next pre- 
sents itself, which is only a headland of high hills 
of sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, hurts 
[i. e. whorts, or whortleberries], and such trash, 
but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This 
Cape is made by the main sea on the one side,, 
and a great bay on the other, in form of a sickle." 
Champlain had already written, "Which we 
named Ca'p Blanc (Cape White), because they 
were sands and downs {sables et dunes) which 
appeared thus." 

When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their re- 
porter says again, "The land for the crust of the 
earth is a spit's depth," — that would seem to be 
their recipe for an earth's crust, — "excellent 
black mould and fat in some places." However, 
according to Bradford himself, whom some con- 
sider the author of part of "Mourt's Relation," 
they who came over in the Fortune the next year 
were somewhat daunted when "they came into 
the harbor of Cape Cod, and there saw nothing 
but a naked and barren place." They soon found 
out their mistake with respect to the goodness of 



PROVINCETOWN 299 

Plymouth soil. Yet when at length, some years 
later, when they were fully satisfied of the poor- 
ness of the place which they had chosen, "the 
greater part," says Bradford, "consented to a 
removal to a place called Nausett," they agreed 
to remove all together to Nauset, now Eastham, 
which was jumping out of the frying-pan into 
the fire ; and some of the most respectable of the 
inhabitants of Plymouth did actually remove 
thither accordingly. 

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims pos- 
sessed but few of the qualities of the modern 
pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the 
American backwoodsmen. They did not go at 
once into the woods with their axes. They were a 
family and church, and were more anxious to 
keep together, though it were on the sand, than 
to explore and colonize a New World. When 
the above-mentioned company removed to East- 
ham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use 
Bradford's expression, "like an ancient mother 
grown old, and forsaken of her children." 
Though they landed on Clark's Island in Ply- 
mouth harbor, the 9th of December (O. S.), and 
the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the 
18th they rambled about the mainland, and the 
19th decided to settle there, it was the 8th of 
January before Francis Billington went with 
one of the master's mates to look at the magnifi- 
cent pond or lake now called "Billington Sea," 



300 CAPE COD 

about two miles distant, which he had discovered 
from the top of a tree, and mistook for a great 
sea. And the 7th of March "Master Carver 
with five others went to the great ponds which 
seem to be excellent fishing," both which points 
are within the compass of an ordinary after- 
noon's ramble, — however wild the country. 
It is true they were busy at first about their 
building, and were hindered in that by much 
foul weather; but a party of emigrants to Cali- 
fornia or Oregon, vriih. no less work on their 
hands, — and more hostile Indians, — would do 
as much exploring the first afternoon, and the 
Sieur de Champlain would have sought an in- 
terview with the savages, and examined the coun- 
try as far as the Connecticut, and made a map of 
it, before Billington had climbed his tree. Or 
contrast them only with the French searching 
for copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603, 
tracing up small streams with Indian guides. 
Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pioneers and the 
ancestors of pioneers, in a far grander enterprise. 
By this time we saw the little steamer Nau- 
shon entering the harbor, and heard the sound 
of her whistle, and came down from the hills to 
meet her at the wharf. So we took leave of Cape 
Cod and its inhabitants. We liked the manners 
of the last, what little we saw of them, very much. 
They were particularly downright and good- 
humored. The old people appeared remarkably 



PROVINCETOWN 301 

well preserved, as if by the saltness of the atmos- 
phere, and after having onee mistaken, we could 
never be certain whether we were talking to a 
coeval of our grandparents, or to one of our own 
age. They are said to be more purely the de- 
scendants of the Pilgrims than the inhabitants 
of any other part of the State. We were told 
that "sometimes, when the court comes together 
at Barnstable, they have not a single criminal to 
try, and the jail is shut up." It was "to let" 
when we were there. Until quite recently there 
was no regular lawyer below Orleans. Who 
then will complain of a few regular man-eating 
sharks along the back-side? 

One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked 
what the fishermen did in the winter, answered 
that they did nothing but go a-visiting, sit about 
and tell stories, — though they worked hard in 
summer. Yet it is not a long vacation they get. 
I am sorry that I have not been there in the winter 
to hear their yarns. Almost every Cape man is 
Captain of some craft or other, — every man at 
least who is at the head of his own affairs, though 
it is not every one that is, for some heads have 
the force of Alpha privative, negativing all the 
efforts which Nature would fain make through 
them. The greater number of men are merely 
corporals. It is worth the while to talk with one 
whom his neighbors address as Captain, though 
his craft may have long been sunk, and he may 



302 CAPE COD 

be holding by his teeth to the shattered mast of a 
pipe alone, and only gets half-seas-over in a 
figurative sense, now. He is pretty sure to vindi- 
cate his right to the title at last, — can tell one 
or two good stories at least. 

For the most part we saw only the back-side 
of the towns, but our storv is true as far as it 
goes. We might have made more of the Bay 
side, but we were inclined to open our eyes widest 
at the Atlantic. \Ye did not care to see those fea- 
tures of the Cape in which it is inferior or merely 
equal to the mainland, but only those in which 
it is peculiar or superior. We cannot say how 
its towns look in front to one who goes to meet 
them ; we went to see the ocean behind them. 
They were merely the raft on which we stood, and 
we took notice of the barnacles which adhered 
to it, and some carvings upon it. 

Before we left the wharf we made the ac- 
quaintance of a passenger whom we had seen at 
the hotel. When we asked him which way he 
came to Provincetown, he answered that he was 
cast ashore at Wood End, Saturday night, in the 
same storm in which the 5/. John was wrecked. 
He had been at work as a carpenter in Maine, 
and took passage for Boston in a schooner laden 
with lumber. When the storm came up, they 
endeavored to get into Provincetown harbor. 
"It was dark and misty,'* said he, "and as we 
were steering for Long Point Light we suddenly 



PROVINCETOWN 303 

saw the land near us, — for our compass was 
out of order, — varied several degrees [a mariner 
always casts the blame on his compass], — but 
there being a mist on shore, we thought it was 
farther off than it was, and so held on, and we 
immediately struck on the bar. Says the Captain, 
*We are all lost.' Says I to the Captain, 'Now 
don't let her strike again this way; head her 
right on.' The Captain thought a moment, and 
then headed her on. The sea washed completely 
over us, and wellnigh took the breath out of my 
body. I held on to the running rigging, but 
I have learned to hold on to the standing rig- 
ging the next time," "Well, were there any 
drowned.?" I asked. "No; we all got safe to 
a house at Wood End, at midnight, wet to our 
skins, and half frozen to death." He had ap- 
parently spent the time since playing checkers at 
the hotel, and was congratulating himself on 
having beaten a tall fellow-boarder at that game. 
"The vessel is to be sold at auction to-day," he 
added. (We had heard the sound of the crier's 
bell which advertised it.) "The Captain is 
rather down about it, but I tell him to cheer up 
and he will soon get another vessel." 

At that moment the Captain called to him from 
the wharf. He looked like a man just from the 
country, with a cap made of a woodchuck's skin, 
and now that I had heard a part of his history, he 
appeared singularly destitute, — a Captain with- 



304 CAPE COD 

out any vessel, only a great-coat ! and that per- 
haps a borrowed one ! Not even a dog followed 
him ; only his title stuck to him. I also saw one 
of the crew. They all had caps of the same pat- 
tern, and wore a subdued look, in addition to their 
naturally aquiline features, as if a breaker — a 
*'comber" — had washed over them. As we 
passed Wood End, we noticed the pile of lumber 
on the shore which had made the cargo of their 
vessel. 

About Long Point in the summer you com- 
monly see them catching lobsters for the New 
York market, from small boats just off the shore, 
or rather, the lobsters catch themselves, for they 
cling to the netting on which the bait is placed of 
their own accord, and thus are drawn up. They 
sell them fresh for two cents apiece. Man needs 
to know but little more than a lobster in order 
to catch him in his traps. The mackerel fleet 
had been getting to sea, one after another, ever 
since midnight, and as we were leaving the Cape 
we passed near to many of them under sail, and 
got a nearer view than we had had ; — half a 
dozen red-shirted men and boys, leaning over 
the rail to look at us, the skipper shouting back 
the number of barrels he had caught, in answer 
to our inquiry. All sailors pause to watch a 
steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In 
one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on 
the rail and stood up as high as any of them, and 





A Provincetown fishing-vessel 



PROVINCETOWN 305 

looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not 
wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, 
rapped him on the nose and sent him below. 
Such is human justice ! I thought I could hear 
him making an effective appeal down there from 
human to divine justice. He must have had 
much the cleanest breast of the two. 

Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay, 
we saw the white sails of the mackerel fishers 
hovering round Cape Cod, and when they were 
all hull-down, and the low extremity of the Cape 
was also down, their white sails still appeared 
on both sides of it, around where it had sunk, 
like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the rare 
qualities of Cape Cod Harbor. But before the 
extremity of the Cape had completely sunk, it 
appeared like a filmy sliver of land lying flat on 
the ocean, and later still a mere reflection of a 
sand-bar on the haze above. Its name suggests 
a homely truth, but it would be more poetic if it 
described the impression which it makes on the 
beholder. Some capes have peculiarly suggestive 
names. There is Cape Wrath, the northwest 
point of Scotland, for instance; what a good 
name for a cape lying far away dark over the 
water under a lowering sky ! 

Mild as it was on shore this morning, the wind 
was cold and piercing on the water. Though it 
be the hottest day in July on land, and the voyage 
is to last but four hours, take your thickest 

20 



306 CAPE COD 

clothes with you, for you are about to float over 
melted icebergs. When I left Boston in the 
steamboat on the 25th of June the next year, it 
was a quite warm day on shore. The passen- 
gers were dressed in their thinnest clothes, and 
at first sat under their umbrellas, but when we 
were fairly out on the Bay, such as had only their 
coats were suffering with the cold, and sought 
the shelter of the pilot's house and the warmth 
of the chimney. But when we approached the 
harbor of Provincetown, I was surprised to 
perceive what an influence that low and narrow 
strip of sand, only a mile or two in width, had over 
the temperature of the air for many miles around. 
We penetrated into a sultry atmosphere where 
our thin coats were once more in fashion, and 
found the inhabitants sweltering. 

Leaving far on one side Manomet Point in 
Plymouth and the Scituate shore, after being out 
of sight of land for an hour or two, for it was 
rather hazy, we neared the Cohasset Rocks 
again at Minot's Ledge, and saw the great 
Tupelo-tree on the edge of Scituate, which lifts 
its dome, like an umbelliferous plant, high over 
the surrounding forest, and is conspicuous for 
many miles over land and water. Here was the 
new iron light-house, then unfinished, in the 
shape of an egg-shell painted red, and placed high 
on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea monster 
floating on the waves, — destined to be phos- 



PROVINCETOWN 307 

phorescent. As we passed it at half-tide we saw 
the spray tossed up nearly to the shell. A man 
was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a 
mile from the shore. When I passed it the next 
summer it was finished and two men lived in it, 
and a light-house keeper said that they told him 
that in a recent gale it had rocked so as to shake 
the plates off the table. Think of making your 
bed thus in the crest of a breaker ! To have the 
waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you 
always, night and day, and from time to time 
making a spring at you, almost sure to have you 
at last. And not one of all those voyagers can 
come to your relief, — but when your light goes 
out, it will be a sign that the Hght of your life 
has gone out also. What a place to compose a 
work on breakers ! This light-house was the 
cynosure of all eyes. Every passenger watched 
it for half an hour at least; yet a colored cook 
belonging to the boat, whom I had seen come 
out of his quarters several times to empty his 
dishes over the side with a flourish, chancing to 
come out just as we were abreast of this light, 
and not more than forty rods from it, and were 
all gazing at it, as he drew back his arm, caught 
sight of it, and with surprise exclaimed, "What's 
that.^" He had been employed on this boat for 
a year, and passed this light every weekday, but 
as he had never chanced to empty his dishes 
just at that point, had never seen it before. To 



308 CAPE COD 

look at lights was the pilot's business ; he minded 
the kitchen fire. It suggested how little some 
who voyaged round the world could manage to 
see. You would almost as easily believe that 
there are men who never yet chanced to come 
out at the right time to see the sun. What avails 
it though a light be placed on the top of a hill, 
if you spend all your life directly under the hill ? 
It might as well be under a bushel. This light- 
house, as is well known, was swept away in a 
storm in April, 1851, and the two men in it, and 
the next morning not a vestige of it was to be 
seen from the shore. 

A Hull man told me that he helped set up a 
white-oak pole on Minot's Ledge some years 
before. It was fifteen inches in diameter, forty- 
one feet high, sunk four feet in the rock, and was 
secured by four guys, — but it stood only one 
year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near the same 
place stood eight years. 

When I crossed the Bay in the Melrose in 
July, we hugged the Scituate shore as long as 
possible, in order to take advantage of the wind. 
Far out on the Bay (off this shore) we scared up 
a brood of young ducks, probably black ones, 
bred hereabouts, which the packet had fre- 
quently disturbed in her trips. A townsman, 
who was making the voyage for the first time, 
walked slowly round into the rear of the helms- 
man, when we were in the middle of the Bay, 



PROVINCETOWN 309 

and looking out over the sea, before he sat down 
there, remarked with as much originaHty as was 
possible for one who used a borrowed expres- 
sion, *'This is a great country." He had been a 
timber merchant, and I afterwards saw him 
taking the diameter of the mainmast with his 
stick, and estimating its height. I returned 
from the same excursion in the Olata, a very 
handsome and swift-sailing yacht, which left 
Provincetown at the same time with two other 
packets, the Melrose and Frolic. At first there 
was scarcely a breath of air stirring, and we 
loitered about Long Point for an hour in com- 
pany, — with our heads over the rail watching 
the great sand-circles and the fishes at the bot- 
tom in calm water fifteen feet deep. But after 
clearing the Cape we rigged a flying-jib, and, as 
the Captain had prophesied, soon showed our con- 
sorts our heels. There was a steamer six or eight 
miles northward, near the Cape, towing a large 
ship toward Boston. Its smoke stretched per- 
fectly horizontal several miles over the sea, and 
by a sudden change in its direction, warned us 
of a change in the wind before we felt it. The 
steamer appeared very far from the ship, and 
some young men who had frequently used the 
Captain's glass, but did not suspect that the 
vessels were connected, expressed surprise that 
they kept about the same distance apart for so 
many hours. At which the Captain dryly re- 



310 CAPE COD 

marked, that probably they would never get 
any nearer together. As long as the wind held 
we kept paee with the steamer, but at length it 
died away almost entirely, and the flying-jib 
did all the work. When we passed the light- 
boat at Minot's Ledge, the Melrose and Frolic 
were just visible ten miles astern. 

Consider the islands bearing the names of all 
the saints, bristling with forts like chestnuts-burs, 
or ecJiijiidcc, yet the police will not let a couple 
of Irishmen have a private sparring-match on 
one of them, as it is a government monopoly ; all 
the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and 
you must sail prudently between two tiers of 
stony knuckles before you come to feel the 
warmth of their breasts. 

The Bermudas are said to have been discov- 
ered by a Spanish ship of that name which was 
wrecked on them, "which till then," says Sir 
John Smith, "for six thousand years had been 
nameless." The English did not stumble upon 
them in their first voyages to Virginia; and 
the first Englishman who was ever there was 
wrecked on them in 1593. Smith says, "No 
place known hath better walls nor a broader 
ditch." Yet at the very first planting of them 
with some sixty persons, in 161''2, the first Gov- 
ernor, the same year, "built and laid the founda- 
tion of eight or nine forts." To be ready, one 
would say, to entertain the first ship's company 



PROVINCETOWN 311 

that should be next shipwrecked on to them. 
It would have been more sensible to have built 
as many "Charity-houses." These are the 
vexed Bermoothees. 

Our great sails caught all the air there was, 
and our low and narrow hull caused the least 
possible friction. Coming up the harbor against 
the stream we swept by everything. Some young 
men returning from a fishing excursion came to 
the side of their smack, while we were thus stead- 
ily drawing by them, and, bowing, observed, 
with the best possible grace, "We give it up." 
Yet sometimes we were nearly at a standstill. 
The sailors watched (two) objects on the shore 
to ascertain whether we advanced or receded. 
In the harbor it was like the evening of a holiday. 
The Eastern steamboat passed us with music 
and a cheer, as if they were going to a ball, when 
they might be going to Davy's locker. 

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix's mate 
to some girls as we passed that spot. That was 
the name of a sailor hung there, he said. — "If 
I am guilty, this island will remain ; but if I am 
innocent it will be washed away," and now it 
is all washed away ! 

Next (?) came the fort on George's Island. 
These are bungling contrivances : not our jorteSy 
but our foibles. Wolfe sailed by the strongest 
fort in North America in the dark, and took it. 

I admired the skill with which the vessel was 



312 CAPE COD 

at last brought to her place in the dock, near the 
end of Long Wharf. It was candle-light, and 
my eyes could not distinguish the wharves jut- 
ting out towards us, but it appeared like an even 
line of shore densely crowded with shipping. 
You could not have guessed within a quarter of 
a mile of Long Wharf. Nevertheless, we were to 
be blown to a crevice amid them, — steering 
right into the maze. Down goes the mainsail, 
and only the jib draws us along. Now we are 
within four rods of the shipping, having already 
dodged several outsiders; but it is still only a 
maze of spars, and rigging, and hulls, — not a 
crack can be seen. Down goes the jib, but still 
we advance. The Captain stands aft with one 
hand on the tiller, and the other holding his 
night-glass, — his son stands on the bowsprit 
straining his eyes, — the passengers feel their 
hearts halfway to their mouths, expecting a 
crash. '* Do you see any room there .^" asks the 
Captain, quietly. He must make up his mind 
in five seconds, else he will carry away that ves- 
sel's bowsprit, or lose his own. "Yes, sir, here 
is a place for us"; and in three minutes more 
we are fast to the wharf in a little gap between 
two bigger vessels. 

And now we were in Boston. Whoever has 
been down to the end of Long Wharf, and 
walked through Quincy Market, has seen Boston. 

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, 



PROVINCETOWN 313 

New Orleans, and the rest, are the names of 
wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by 
the shops and dweUings of the merchants), good 
places to take in and to discharge a cargo (to land 
the products of other climes and load the exports 
of our own). I see a great many barrels and 
fig-drums, — piles of wood for umbrella-sticks, 
— blocks of granite and ice, — great heaps of 
goods, and the means of packing and conveying 
them, — much wrapping-paper and twine, — 
many crates and hogsheads and trucks, — and 
that is Boston. The more barrels, the more Bos- 
ton. The museums and scientific societies and 
libraries are accidental. They gather around the 
sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and cus- 
tomhouse officers, and broken-down poets, seek- 
ing a fortune amid the barrels. Their better or 
worse lyceums, and preachings, and doctorings, 
these, too, are accidental, and the malls of com- 
mons are always small potatoes. When I go to 
Boston, I naturally go straight through the city 
(taking the Market in my way), down to the 
end of Long Wharf, and look off, for I have no 
cousins in the back alleys, — and there I see a 
great many countrymen in their shirt-sleeves 
from Maine, and Pennsylvania, and all along 
shore and in shore, and some foreigners beside, 
loading and unloading and steering their teams 
about, as at a country fair. 

When we reached Boston that October, I had 



314 CAPE COD 

a gill of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at 
Concord there was still enough left to sand my 
pages for many a day ; and I seemed to hear the 
sea roar, as if I lived in a shell, for a week 
afterward. 

The places which I have described may seem 
strange and remote to my townsmen, — indeed, 
from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as 
from England to France ; yet step into the cars, 
and in six hours you may stand on those four 
planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said 
to have discovered, and which I have so poorly 
described. If you had started when I first ad- 
vised you, you might have seen our tracks in the 
sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way from 
the Nauset Lights to Race Point, some thirty 
miles, — for at every step we made an impres- 
sion on the Cape, though we were not aware of 
it, and though our account may have made no 
impression on your minds. But what is our 
account ? In it there is no roar, no beach-birds, 
no tow-cloth. 

We often love to think now of the life of men 
on beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the 
weather is serene ; their sunny lives on the sand, 
amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, their 
companion a cow, their wealth a jag of drift- 
wood or a few beach-plums, and their music the 
surf and the peep of the beach-bird. 

We went to see the Ocean, and that is probably 



PROVINCETOWN 315 

the best place of all our coast to go to. If you 
go by water, you may experience what it is to 
leave and to approach these shores; you may 
see the Stormy Petrel by the way, ^aXacro-oS/ao/xa, 
running over the sea, and if the weather is but a 
little thick, may lose sight of the land in mid- 
passage. I do not know where there is another 
beach in the Atlantic States, attached to the 
mainland, so long, and at the same time so 
straight, and completely uninterrupted by creeks 
or coves or fresh-water rivers or marshes; for 
though there may be clear places on the map, 
they would probably be found by the foot trav- 
eller to be intersected by creeks and marshes; 
certainly there is none where there is a double 
way, such as I have described, a beach and a 
bank, which at the same time shows you the 
land and the sea, and part of the time two seas. 
The Great South Beach of Long Island, which 
I have since visited, is longer still without an 
inlet, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, exposed, 
several miles from the Island, and not the edge 
of a continent wasting before the assaults of the 
Ocean. Though wild and desolate, as it wants 
the bold bank, it possesses but half the grandeur 
of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the imagination 
contented with its southern aspect. The only 
other beaches of great length on our Atlantic 
coast, which I have heard sailors speak of, are 
those of Barnegat on the Jersey shore, and Cur- 



316 CAPE COD 

rituck between Virginia and North Carolina; 
but these, Hke the last, are low and narrow sand- 
bars, lying off the coast, and separated from the 
mainland by lagoons. Besides, as you go far- 
ther south, the tides are feebler, and cease to add 
variety and grandeur to the shore. On the Pacific 
side of our country also no doubt there is good 
walking to be found ; a recent writer and dweller 
there tells us that "the coast from Cape Disap- 
pointment (or the Columbia River) to Cape 
Flattery (at the Strait of Juan de Fuca) is nearly 
north and south, and can be travelled almost its 
entire length on a beautiful sand-beach," with 
the exception of two bays, four or five rivers, and 
a few points jutting into the sea. The common 
shell-fish found there seem to be often of cor- 
responding types, if not identical species, with 
those of Cape Cod. The beach which I have 
described, however, is not hard enough for car- 
riages, but must be explored on foot. When one 
carriage has passed along, a following one sinks 
deeper still in its rut. It has at present no name 
any more than fame. That portion south of 
Nauset Harbor is commonly called Chatham 
Beach. The part in Eastham is called Nauset 
Beach, and off Wellfleet and Truro the Back- 
side, or sometimes, perhaps, Cape Cod Beach. 
I think that part which extends without interrup- 
tion from Nauset Harbor to Race Point should 
be called Cape Cod Beach, and do so speak of it. 



PROVINCETOWN 317 

One of the most attractive points for visitors is 
in the northeast part of Wellfleet, where accom- 
modations (I mean for men and women of toler- 
able health and habits) could probably be had 
within half a mile of the sea-shore. It best 
combines the country and the seaside. Though 
the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest murmur is 
audible, and you have only to climb a hill to find 
yourself on its brink. It is but a step from the 
glassy surface of the Herring Ponds to the big 
Atlantic Pond where the waves never cease to 
break. Or perhaps the Highland Light in Truro 
may compete with this locality, for there, there 
is a more uninterrupted view of the Ocean and 
the Bay, and in the summer there is always some 
air stirring on the edge of the bank there, so that 
the inhabitants know not what hot weather is. 
As for the view, the keeper of the light, with one 
or more of his family, walks out to the edge of 
the bank after every meal to look off, just as if 
they had not lived there all their days. In short, 
it will wear well. And what picture will you sub- 
stitute for that, upon your walls.? But ladies 
cannot get down the bank there at present with- 
out the aid of a block and tackle. 

Most persons visit the sea-side in warm 
weather, when fogs are frequent, and the at- 
mosphere is wont to be thick, and the charm of 
the sea is to some extent lost. But I suspect that 
the fall is the best season, for then the atmos- 



318 CAPE COD 

phere is more transparent, and it is a greater 
pleasure to look out over the sea. The clear and 
bracing air, and the storms of autumn and win- 
ter even, are necessary in order that we may 
get the impression which the sea is calculated 
to make. In October, when the weather is not 
intolerably cold, and the landscape wears its 
autumnal tints, such as, methinks, only a Cape 
Cod landscape ever wears, especially if you have 
a storm during your stay, — that I am convinced 
is the best time to visit this shore. In autumn, 
even in August, the thoughtful days begin, and 
we can walk anywhere with profit. Beside, an 
outward cold and dreariness, which make it 
necessary to seek shelter at night, lend a spirit 
of adventure to a walk. 

The time must come when this coast will be a 
place of resort for those New-Englanders who 
really wish to visit the sea-side. At present it is 
wholly unknown to the fashionable w^orld, and 
probably it will never be agreeable to them. If 
it is merely a ten-pin alley, or a circular railway, 
or an ocean of mint-julep, that the visitor is in 
search of, — if he thinks more of the wine than 
the brine, as I suspect some do at Newport, — 
I trust that for a lopg time he will be disappointed 
here. But this shore will never be more attrac- 
tive than it is now. Such beaches as are fash- 
ionable are here made and unmade in a day, I 
may almost say, by the sea shifting its sands. 



PROVINCETOWN 319 

Lynn and Nantasket ! this bare and bended arm 
it is that makes the bay in which they lie so 
snugly. What are springs and waterfalls ? Here 
is the spring of springs, the waterfall of water- 
falls. A storm in the fall or winter is the time to 
visit it; a light-house or a fisherman's hut the 
true hotel. A man may stand there and put all 
America behind him. 



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